“So where are we with the advice gap?”

Jul 4, 2019 | Financial Services

This message popped up when I logged on to my Lloyds bank account: ‘Did you know that we can offer you a Personal Financial Advice Service through our partnership with Schroders Personal Wealth? Eligibility criteria, fees and charges apply’. Maybe, I thought, this will close the ‘advice gap’, with the banks and others once again giving much-needed help and advice to the masses. Then I checked the ‘eligibility criteria’: ‘At least £100,000 in savings and £100,000 of sole annual income’. So just under 5% of the working population. Not exactly the masses.

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“Simon Evan-Cook: FCA must wake up to consolidation damage”

“Simon Evan-Cook: FCA must wake up to consolidation damage”

This is where I can don my ‘been around the block, seen it all before’ mantle. What’s happening in our business/industry/profession at the moment is a lot of what’s become known as consolidation, big companies, many fuelled by private equity, buying up smaller firms or taking over the clients of retiring advisers.