Friends Life launches direct-to-consumer financial planning service
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Friends Life has rolled out a direct-to-consumer financial planning service offering advice to existing customers on how to manage their Friends Life policies.
PlanWise is a phone and web-based service which allows Friends Life customers to check valuations, view fund factsheets, check fund prices and switch funds. It launched in April with no publicity.
The website says that customers using PlanWise can access “professional financial advice” and promises “in-depth advice on your Friends Life plan and more.” It also includes the statement: “By registering for PlanWise, you will be replacing the current adviser to your Friends Life plan with PlanWise.”
Marketing director Jo Cann says the PlanWise service is for existing Friends customers who have lost access to their IFA or who no longer have a relationship with their IFA.
She says: “It is a service for our existing customers, it is not for new customers. We already know we have got some orphan customers so it was developed primarily with them in mind. There is an expectation that with the RDR there will be further customers who perhaps do not have access to advice, so we built the service with that in mind as well. We offer clients a financial review of their existing plan and we make it very clear that we can only talk to them about their existing Friends products.”
The service is also available to Friends’ existing direct customers.
Last week, Money Marketing reported that Friends had sent a mailing to a number of Woodcocks financial services manager Brian Ollerton’s clients and made follow-up phone calls about their relationship with their IFA.
Ollerton says: “I feel Friends is not being totally open with us about what it is doing. Normally, with this kind of service, there would be a fanfare around its launch. The fact that it has not publicised this service speaks volumes.”
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Readers' comments (26)
Carol | 22 Sep 2011 8:58 am
Other companies allow access to policy information, fact sheets and some, fund switches, but by doing so do not remove the existing adviser. If access to the information means you lose your client, I for one will not be recommending Friends Life.
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Anonymous | 22 Sep 2011 9:02 am
Hmmm....and exactly how would they know that an IFA relationship does not exist? Write to them perhaps? Ask loaded qestions on their website? Either way it smacks of not being very honest.
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Paul | 22 Sep 2011 9:14 am
This seems like the thin edge of the wedge to me. IFS are gradually being left out of the loop. Perhaps there will be repercussions felt by the effects of RDR that some people within our industry failed to foresee.
It would be a refreshing change to read a headline that made me positive about the future, unfortunately it feels like IFA’s are under attack from every direction.
Perhaps the practices with ‘high net worth clients’ and many millions of pounds under management will benefit from RDR but days are numbered for most IFA businesses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Anonymous | 22 Sep 2011 9:24 am
Networks not owned by FLI and all OFA,s should now stop placing business with them. This may make them realise that they just cannot poach clients. Their action must show how much they are suffering
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David Marsh | 22 Sep 2011 9:33 am
This would tend to fit in with their poor service standards offered currently to the IFA community.
As a knock-on we are forced to offer slow response times to client questions. Next thing on the door mate a client receives an invite to deal direct and I would guess, with no surprise, a prompt improved response time. as a result the IFA will loose the servicing rights and also a further element of income.
By removing the IFA from the equation the client will suffer the lose of true advice and at the same time weaken the IFA community again.
This is just another example of RDR in motion with the general objective to reduce down real client advice and replace with a much watered down thinly spread multi- provider information This will result in no advise only information and each provider unashamedly selling their product with little regard for the client.
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colin | 22 Sep 2011 9:46 am
I appear to have erased ny Friends life contact details, how careless!
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Luke Atkinson | 22 Sep 2011 10:04 am
I wonder how many more will follow Friends move?
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Anonymous | 22 Sep 2011 10:12 am
No more business for them then.
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Anonymous | 22 Sep 2011 11:12 am
So Friends and the client collude to switch off the trail, with Friends accepting NO responsibility for suitability of the plan going forward and the IFA remaining liable to infinity because the longstop is ignored by the FOS!
If trail is turned off, WHY should the IFA keep the file for anymore than 6 years from the date of loss of agency? Both Friends and the EX customer will have checked suitability and ADVISED on ongoing suitability and should pick up any flaws in suitability at that time.
Comments welcome...
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John Hutton | 22 Sep 2011 11:45 am
Wouldn't the better strategy be to contact all of your clients who have policies with Friend's Life and make sure that they know who you are rather than wasting energy getting cross with FL!
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