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.
“Britain has lost 435 financial advice firms since 2022”
Headline figures, there were over 200,000 financial advisers at the end of the ’90s, there are around 30,000 now and our numbers are continuing to reduce.