Research by Royal London estimates that there are 3.7 million people in the UK with investable assets of £50,000 or more who are not currently receiving financial planning advice. That is a total of £185 billion in assets.
The FCA has also recently estimated that there are 8.3 million consumers with £10,000 in “investible” assets which are currently sat in cash deposits. That’s £86 billion. These are funds which consumers are prepared to take an element of investment risk on according to the FCA’s research. Which is why they are targeting these potential investors and have set themselves a target of reducing the amount sat in cash by 20% as part of their aim to reduce “investment harm”. In this instance the harm is a perceived loss of income which could be achieved through investment rather than leaving deposits in cash. The FCA will try to do this by looking at the regulations around investment into ISA’s and Tracker Funds. The idea seems to be to relax the requirement for “advice” and make these types of funds more accessible/mainstream. This seems like a good idea. If more people can become conditioned to achieving better returns from investing it will be a first step towards further holistic financial planning advice.
The issues around the Advice Gap and access to advisors will still remain, however. But people should do better with their savings than almost nil rate returns from savings accounts. Especially with inflation now topping 3% of the first time in years.
At the same time the FCA has set itself ambitious targets to reduce the number of consumers holding what it deems as “high risk” investments, where it fears consumers could face real financial harm.
