I don’t mean to sound cynical but the FCA began on a review of whether providers could give people a nudge in May 2019, when it said it was looking to “probe the financial advice gap”.
In April this year, the FCA told us it had finished a “consumer investment policy sprint” so that we could say to our kids get stuck in to investments without fear of the long arm of regulation. Back then it found that only 9% of us are taking regulated financial advice.
Now for the first time we can say what everyone wants to be said, what is clear and obvious but has till now been shrouded in the mystery of “financial advice“.
The FCA said the new regime was designed to help the more than half of British savers who told a recent survey that they wanted more support on how to invest their money.
The regulator estimated about 7mn British adults had more than £10,000 in cash savings and no investments, adding that between 13.5mn and 30.6mn people could benefit from targeted support.
Back in April, Sarah Pritchard, who is now Deputy CEO at the FCA made it clear that the old way was on the way out and the way that made sense to us for generations was on the way back
‘We want to see a consumer investment market where people can invest with confidence, understanding the risks and opportunities available to them. The sprint is an important step to achieving that goal, helping firms explore ways to support consumers and helping the FCA to refine the proposed policy framework before consultation. We look forward to seeing more innovative solutions emerge.
‘We encourage firms and consumer groups to keep engaging with us, and for firms who are interested to use our sandboxes to start testing their innovative solutions now.’
Well my firm, AgeWage, used the innovation sandbox, spent a fortune on finding out what we already knew, then a large amount staying regulated to a point where we nearly went bust offering innovative advice through value for money scores on long term saving.
Let me say this from the point of view of someone who wants up to 30.6 million people to have access to simple advice as to what to do that this cannot come a moment too soon! We entered the FCA’s innovation sandbox because we were confident that today would come, but we did not think in the summer of 2019 – 6 years ago – that it would take so long to have a relaxation to make innovation work.
We are no longer regulated by the FCA and it’s not because we do not want to be but because we could not afford to. There are firms such as Guiide who have done a better job than AgeWage by not blowing their wad on becoming an FCA adviser and I admire them for it. I wish we had never bothered.
The FT agrees, here is the very agreeable Emma Dunkley
The development comes more than 10 years after the FCA’s Retail Distribution Review, which aimed to drive up standards of financial advice but ultimately drove up its cost and left many people unable to afford such services in an “advice gap”.
Our innovation was to show everyone how their individual saving was getting on. We told people who were invested in cash or even corporates bonds and gilts, what was happening to their money. We showed them against the benchmark of what most people were getting if they were doing well and badly and told them they were doing badly if they stuck in cash. It was the figures that did the talking and a retail VFM system based on the internal rates of return of each individual’s investments can now be shared with them, with targeted support, to show people what’s going on and advise them what to do.
The system has been unfortunately warped so that the 9% who pay for advice are those who have the money to pay for it. Few write out cheques for advice, instead the money is taken from their funds as an annual management charge which includes advice. Those who do not have the money to pay that charge do not get advised. It means that advice is a wealth tax.
What we have for those who cannot afford advice is the emergence of defaults, not just for saving but for spending, that’s what the Pension Schemes Bill and hopefully Act will do for those who do not want to pay wealth advice/tax.
And they will be able to get the kind of simple advice I have wanted VFM scores to give. Having waited 10 years since the Retail Distribution Review and six years since reading this
The City watchdog is assessing the impact of two landmark initiatives that came into force in the past few years: the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) and the Financial Advice Market Review (FAMR). The regulator’s work will be finalised in 2020.
Today’s news is five years later than was promised and millions of people have been denied advice when drawing money from their pension pots and not investing when saving.
It is better late than never and I am glad we now have , in Sarah Pritchard, someone who I admire.
Should I have to write this blog? Should I have failed these last six years to deliver the targeted support I set out to provide when taking AgeWage into the Innovation Sandbox in 2019? Better late than never, but shame on the system which held this support up 10 years.
How we wanted it to be – and still could be”