Banks Leaving Financial Advice to IFAs

1990: Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down

Banks have been declaring their hand for the new financial world from 1st January. Last week Santander announced that they would only be offering investment advice to those with £25,000 or more and only from the range of products that they produce. In short they sell what they make. I'm always amazed that anyone would actually go to a bank for financial advice, but hopefully from January at least it will be clear how little a part of a proper conversation they are even able to entertain.

This was on the back of Lloyds also announcing that they are scrapping their services to anyone with less than £100,000 - again, why would anyone with £100,000 go to Lloyds for investment advice is beyond me. Barclays had already announced that they will not offer financial advice, except via its wealth management team, who focus on ultra wealthy (and presumably fairly easily pleased). HSBC will scrap their tied advice and provide execution only services (meaning you order what you want and they sort it out), they intend to remain whole of market, though frankly I don't see how this will work in practice. Royal Bank of Scotland has abolished its independent arm (if you could ever find it) and going for a restricted model (limited financial products). Nationwide, one of my favourite Building Societies, is going to give it a go at offering fee based advice. It will be interesting to see how they get on and I imagine that the other Banks will be watching carefully.

So in summary, the new rules about providing advice mean that the vast majority of people living in Britain will not get any form of independent advice. They probably won't get an awful lot of option for restricted advice either. That of course is one way to solve the problem of mis-selling and scandal (reduce the choice) but it doesn't seem terribly well thought through to me. We need a society with better financial education and greater access, not less.