The survey, which polled 192 financial advisers based in the UK, found that despite 37% of IFAs feeling optimistic about UK performance, market fears over a ‘Brexit’ – widely believed to have caused the pound to slump to a seven-year low – means that over a third of their clients feel pessimistic about the state of the British economy.
Andy Coleman, director of distribution at Cofunds, said: “Slow growth in the Chinese economy, coupled with commodity shocks, saw the BRIC countries drop out of favour in 2015, resulting in the FTSE 100 seeing a slump.
“It is not at all surprising that advisers view market performance as their biggest challenge in 2016 given continued market volatility. Advisers will no doubt be keeping a very close eye on the financial markets as the year progresses, and it will be interesting to see how the rest of the year pans out.”
This is in stark contrast to the same time last year when only 9% of advisers were worried about market performance and 39% felt that the biggest challenges they faced were continued regulatory reforms and the impact of the new retirement changes.
The survey also found that half of advisers named equities as their preferred asset class for this year, despite it having decreased in popularity compared to the second half of 2015. Meanwhile, property remained the second most popular asset class for advisers (34%), followed by fixed income and bonds in joint third spot (22%).
