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I question the wisdom of locating a financial planning conference in Anaheim - home to Disneyland. On the other hand, perhaps there is synergy with Mickey and his pals and those in banking. Both are disconnected with real life and take large amounts of money for an unsuspecting public, but more of that later.
On the topic of fairy stories, I hope the RDR will have a happy ending with a more professional sector and the mass market receiving a service fit for purpose. If we reduce the number of advisers and make advice available only to those with excess income/ assets, then the review has failed.
We need to make sure advice is freely available, albeit not always free in the monetary sense.This means thinking outside the box.The fixation on one-to-one advice is in many ways what has held us back.
We need to consider using seminars and workshops as an alternative to one-to-one advice. Grouped advice for the mass market could be the answer. Since the early days of the Citizens Advice money plan project (pro bono), I have promoted the “weight watchers” model as a means of engaging and advising people in a group setting.
This takes me to the qualifications for this kind of group advice. Level four is probably too high and level three would be more appropriate. I understand that for only £15,000 you can now get to level seven. I do not think that offer will result in much of a stampede for applications.
As well as level three, the group advisers would need to be professionally trained in public presentations.
However, this can only take the public’s imagination if there is greater clarity on the state’s role in benefits in the years to come.The farce with means-testing needs to be brought to a rapid halt by the next Government. We need to ensure people under 50 realise they need to save if they are to avoid working until they die.
The DWP has recognised the need for effective communications on auto-enrolment and given the delays on its rollout, it will have time to develop its plans. Quite why the SMEs are to follow the major plcs in the rollout, I can only guess this is because it defers the problems personal accounts will deliver.
But before I forget, before the official opening of the Financial Planning Association conference in Anaheim, the international delegates dined out on the Friday before the conference , the location was Disneyland downtown, the food was average and the Japanese requested initial bills, 52 in all. In hindsight, I noticed that one pint of beer had cost me $18. I know that Disney is about magical experiences but in this case the major disappearance was in foreign currency, hence my suggestion of synergy between Mickey and his friends and the UK banking sector.
Robert Reid is managing director of Syndaxi Chartered Financial Planners
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Readers' comments (1)
Phil Castle | 28 Oct 2009 1:53 pm
I agree with the thrust of your article. We used to do presentations to Group Scheme members on the GPPs and stakeholders we operated for their employers and we widened it out to general finance over the years (all for free). I even looked at the FSAs pilot on this, but the training they intended giving meant that you would have to stick to s script THEY designed which woudl compromise my independance.
Bearing in midn the low financial skills of the general public, most of what we need to tell clients in those circumstances isn't even level 3, it's simple common sense and all a lot of these people want you to tell them is that the sales wheeze they've seen in the papers adn the journalists spin of a product is just that. if it doesn't look like common sense to them, it probably isn't.
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