The £50,000 barrier to financial advice has been restated by the adviser community, with 60% claiming it will not be profitable to service clients with less than £50k in investable assets post-RDR and 36% planning to reduce their service levels to such clients.
The gaping hole left by the exit of advisers and banks from the mass advice market will be filled by businesses and entrepreneurs that are not afraid to seize the opportunities on offer, according to consensus from a panel of financial services professionals.
IFAs are facing greater competition from industry investment brands as well as more publicly-focused financial brands – all of which is to be embraced not avoided.
The vast majority of advisers (90%) feel their firms have the resource and knowledge to survive the changes imposed by RDR, but many are less sanguine about the ability of the industry as a whole to do so.
The FSA has reinforced its message that advisers must not receive kick-back payments from discretionary managers.
Just because the European Commission has banned commission payments in Europe…a similar ban, quite rightly, is not going to happen over here.
Lloyds Banking Group, which was today revealed by the FSA to have the third-highest number of investment-related complaints, has announced it is to pull out of the mass market advice service.
Liontrust has posted its ninth successive quarter of positive inflows, despite chief executive John Ions tempering optimism with concerns over the impact of RDR.
The Association of Independent Financial Advisers (AIFA) is set to be renamed as the Association of Professional Financial Advisers (APFA) in preparation for the post-RDR landscape.
The number of intermediaries offering execution-only, non-advised services is set to triple in the next two years as RDR-pricing pressures force them to look elsewhere for revenue.
In the coming weeks advisers will receive notifications of fund groups’ new RDR-compliant share classes which could include new terms of business and should be thoroughly digested, according to JPMorgan Asset Management’s head of UK retail Mike Parsons.
If you are breathing a sigh of relief because your business model is just about ready for RDR implementation, you are relaxing too soon. The next big regulatory challenge is on the horizon and will require your full attention.
