The FCA has paused its plans to create a simplified advice regime around ISA investments as Citywire reports, but it is proceeding with work on reforming the advice and guidance boundary.
Regulation Tomorrow provides this neat summary of the regulator’s statement.
The following two points are arguably the most interesting.
* The solution to this challenge will not be met by changes to regulated advice alone. People’s needs are diverse and vary over their lifetime. The FCA need firms to actively engage and provide flexible forms of support that can adapt to different types of financial decisions.
* Any solution will rely on support being provided on a commercial basis. The review will need to focus on outcomes and design a regulatory system where commercially viable models of support can emerge.
The regulator has also published clarification of how firms can give more support to clients and customers in the context of cost-of-living challenges without straying into giving recommendations.
Advisers may have their own views on where this all ends up. It is the best part of twenty years of discussion and most would say with little to show for it.
Writing in Money Marketing, Mark Dampier suggests that there are opportunities aplenty for low risk investors including in gilts.
Cash equivalent transfer values (CETV) for defined benefit (DB) schemes have halved compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to Barnett Waddingham analysis, as Professional Adviser reports.
The Consumer Duty is now in force but stories continue to bubble up. Lots are predictive. So 58% of advisers in this Professional Adviser story are concerned it could widen the advice gap according to research from Boring Money and Quilter. There are some other optimistic stories as well, with this survey from Guardian Financial Services suggesting that 40% of advisers believe that more protection may be sold as FTAdviser reports which may not be a bad thing.
The Bank of England raised rates by 0.25% to 5.25%, though one MPC member wanted to leave rates on hold and two to raise rates by 0.5%.
Perhaps the more concerning news is the Bank’s view that rates will have to remain high for up to two years as the Guardian reports.
Liam Halligan in the Telegraph argues that the Bank has gone too far.
