Article by Phil
Since the pandemic hot back in 2020, there have been a multitude of surveys looking at the changes in customers’ requirements for advice and how advisers have adapted. We’ve looked at a number of these before.
Charles Stanley have now (25th February) conducted their own survey of financial advisors themselves to see how they feel that things have changed. Here are some of their findings:
- Interestingly, a third of advisers said that their clients have wanted more contact with them since the pandemic struck.
- Half reported that the number of face-to-face meetings had gone down. Pre-pandemic over 50% of meetings were face to face, now according to the survey only a quarter of meetings are. (Not in our experience)
- Video conference meetings had risen from 20% to just over a third.
- Telephone calls remain about the same.
- Contact via messaging services has increased slightly to almost one fifth. As we’ve reported previously the FCA does have concerns about data security for adviser using messaging systems. (We would never send any client communications outside our encrypted portal).
- The number of people not having any client meetings increased from 5% to over 10%. (One in ten seems like quite a high number to us)
Added to the other surveys this seems to confirm the common theme that the number of face-to-face meetings has gone down. This flies in the face of our experience where clients seem to have relished the opportunity to come back into the Office.
But how are people actually investing?
A survey by eToro (28th February) looked specifically at how women had invested during and since the pandemic.
- 50% of the women surveyed said they had only started investing over the last two years and 50% were advised to invest by family and friends rather than advisers.
- Almost 80% were confident that their plans would be sufficient for their retirement income.
- 40% had bought UK domestic shares but
- 32% had bought cryptocurrencies
- With 31% holding cash
Women are underrepresented in the advice industry with only 16% of advisers being women. Outnumbered by six to one. That’s despite more women working than ever before and over 57% of students in higher education now women.
