News

Editor’s Comment: Is a jobless Financial Planning boom under way?

2026-07-24T16:11:17+01:00

The latest FCA Retail Mediation Report for 2025 makes for interesting if conflicting reading. It shows the retail investment sector is mostly in robust health financially except there’s a problem - the number of advisers is declining, significantly.

The FCA’s Retail Mediation Activities Return report for last year shows a very health sector in terms of revenue and new clients but a continuing decline in the number of advisers and adviser firms.

The number of adviser firms, for example, has fallen by 630 since 2020 to 4,872 in 2025.

The figures illustrate the impact of rapid consolidation of firms amid a waver of mergers and takeovers.

The number of advisers fell too. Between 2023 and 2025, the number of advisers fell from 37,729 to 37,517 in 2025. A fairly modest decline but part of a long term trend downwards over the last six years.

On the positive side, business was healthy with significant rises in revenue and clients. In 2020 advice firms served 3.577m clients. In 2023 this had risen to 4.034m and in 2025 it rose again to 4.158m. Financial advice firms are also seeing nearly 600,000 new clients a year turning to them for help and the number of clients ceasing to use them each year actually fell between 2024 and 2025 to 338,000 so they are retaining clients better too.

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So what are we to make of all this?

Financially there is no escaping the fact the sector is - in money terms - in robust good health. Revenues and productivity are rising and many of the figures look very positive. Greater use of technology, consolidation and the arrival of large scale private equity investors is propelling the sector forward.

What is less clear is where the next generation of advisers is coming from, the ones who will move all this forward.

It seems to be almost a jobless boom taking place which is interesting in its own way but perhaps not an encouraging sign. What is not too clear from the figures is the number of support staff adviser firms employ. Logically, the only way the boom in business can be supported long term is with lots of additional support staff such as Paraplanners to serve all the extra clients.

There has been a boom in Paraplanning so perhaps while adviser job growth has been weak, the real growth in jobs has been in support staff.

Either way, the profession needs to do much more to find and recruit the next generation of Financial Planners. I attended the recent anniversary of the Personal Finance Society’s Pathway to the Profession campaign which has offered a range of incentives and scholarships to encourage new talent, with some positive success. Hundreds of young people and career changers have applied and many are already joining firms and taking courses and exams.

This is a meaningful and laudable attempt to reverse the decline in adviser numbers and I hope it continues.

No profession can prosper in the long term if its raw material, its own members, suffers an interminable decline.

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Kevin O’Donnell is editor of Financial Planning Today and a journalist with 40 years of experience in finance, business and daily news. This topical comment appears most weeks, usually on Fridays but occasionally other days. Email: editor@portfoliopublishing.co.uk Follow @FPT_Kevin

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Editor’s Comment: Advice sector on target for a major shake-up

2026-03-20T15:38:54+00:00

In just a few weeks the FCA’s much-heralded Targeted Support changes will arrive (on 6 April) and the advice world will change for the better - at least everyone hopes it does, because nothing is certain.

Certainly the move will open up doors to new types of financial guidance, with providers able to give much more of a nudge to consumers to move some of their money into investments rather than leaving it snoring away in a dull cash savings account.

All good so far but there are inevitably risks.

When the plans were first announced, some advisers were worried that some savers might shift their money away to lower cost 'generic' advice firms or even worse, might avoid advisers altogether because professional regulated advice is seen as too costly.

Personally I never thought this was likely and a new survey from Opinium we’ve covered on Financial Planning Today this week suggests that many advisers indeed welcome the new Targeted Support guidance plans.

More than half of IFAs questioned by Opinium (57%) thought that Targeted Support would help consumers ‘better plan’ their finances, while 46% believed Targeted Support would make it “more likely” people would seek bespoke financial advice in future. Only one in five advisers thought it less likely that people would seek independent financial advice.

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Of course, it is early days and we have yet to see the impact of Targeted Support, and indeed which players will join the fray, but at least it arrives with the hope that the changes will be for the better.

It does, of course, come with some regulatory risk. The FCA has done its best to differentiate between ’Targeted Support’ - 'advice lite' if you like - and what we might call 'full fat' Financial Planning advice but there will be grey areas and no doubt some disputes over which is which. I suspect the ambulance chasers are already showing strong interest.

Despite the risks, however, I am sure this is the right direction for the retail finance sector and many advisers seem to agree.

The truth is that with only one in 10 of the population taking regulated financial advice, most likely due to the cost, the vast majority of the population have little to no access to any kind of financial help beyond YouTube videos and some personal finance websites and that cannot be right. It will also never change unless something is done.

My guess is that there is an untapped thirst for more financial guidance and many millions will gain better access to financial guidance. Some with more complex needs will go on to seek full fat Financial Planning and that will be a positive thing. The benefits of consulting a professional Financial Planner remain the same.

Targeted Support may just be the conduit to a bigger financial advice sector to the benefit of the majority of the population.

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Kevin O’Donnell is editor of Financial Planning Today and a journalist with 40 years of experience in finance, business and mainstream news. This topical comment on the Financial Planning news appears most weeks, usually on Fridays but occasionally other days. Email: editor@portfoliopublishing.co.uk Follow @FPT_Kevin

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Editor’s Comment: Time to focus on 'fun' and not 'funds'?

2025-09-26T15:16:59+01:00

I attended the CISI Financial Planning Conference in Windsor this week and I can report that, despite all the challenges, the mood, or the vibe as many call it these days, was a good one.

Judging by the very expensive cars in the car park, times have been good recently for Financial Planners.

It was good to catch up with familiar faces and also interesting chatting to many new Financial Planners at the conference, many of them running their own firms or some who had just sold theirs.

There has probably never been a better time to be a Financial Planner if you are running a robust, well managed, profitable business. I heard over and over that margins were good and the demand for professional financial advice seems only to rise.

There is no doubt, from what I was told, that the Treasury plan to add Inheritance Tax to unused pensions from 2027 has only boosted the demand for advice.

I attended many sessions and there were some key themes that came through; the move towards higher professional standards, the desire to provide a better service to clients and the increasing integration of Artificial Intelligence into Financial Planning, with several sessions on this topic.

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There was, however, one session that caught me slightly by surprise as it was against the grain of the current drive to consolidate and accumulate assets. It was by the influential Financial Planner Warren Shute of Lexington Wealth.

As he mentioned, many consolidators have grown rapidly by acquiring the assets of financial advice firms. This is now a familiar model and I am agnostic on whether this is a good thing or not. To my mind there are good consolidators and bad ones but the desire to build bigger Financial Planning firms is a natural one and if the sector is to serve more people then larger Financial Planning firms will be one solution.

Warren, however, believes that simply accumulating assets is pretty boring and a very dull way to do (Financial Planning) business as it focuses primarily on acquisition of assets and not clients. He may have a point.

In his view, wealth management of the holistic style is much more interesting, far better for clients (who can afford it) and generally a lot more enjoyable to provide.

Listening to him talking about his array of client events, including nights with magicians, wine tastings and exclusive chef’s table events I could see what he was getting at.

Financial Planning, indeed all business, should be fun and enjoyable and it should involve a rewarding, long term relationship with clients from which both sides benefit.

Boosst founder Keith Butten made the similar points in another entertaining session, the gist of which was, “if you’re not having fun why are you doing it?”

These are all things to reflect on post conference but given the positive and ebullient atmosphere at the conference perhaps there is much to be said for focusing more on the “fun” aspects of Financial Planning and perhaps less on the “funds.”

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Kevin O’Donnell is editor of Financial Planning Today and a journalist with 40 years of experience. This topical comment on the Financial Planning news appears most weeks, usually on Fridays but occasionally other days. Email: editor@portfoliopublishing.co.uk Follow @FPT_Kevin

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Editor’s Comment: Why surging complaints culture needs action

2025-07-04T10:33:26+01:00

Nothing sums up Britain’s rising claims culture than the astonishing figures published by the Financial Ombudsman Service this week.

In its latest annual report, the FOS, which handles consumer complaints about financial services firms and products, reported that it had received over 305,000 complaints - 50% up on the year before.

The surge was driven in large part by a flood of complaints from ‘professional representatives’ - code for Claims Management Companies (CMCs).

The FOS said that around half of all cases are now submitted by professional representatives, double the percentage of the previous year.

Incredibly, nearly half the organisation's workload now comes from professional claims firms.

CMCs (or ambulance chasers as some know them) are becoming voracious in submitting thousands of claims.

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One annoying aspect of this, from the FOS point of view, is that many of the claims are dropped. It’s not clear why this is but it could be that the CMCs decide, for one reason or another, that a particularly category or group of complaints is not worth pursuing, perhaps because there are juicier bones elsewhere.

The Financial Ombudsman admitted that a significant chunk of its resources are now spent handling, "thousands of withdrawn and abandoned cases", mainly from professional representatives. To try to tackle this avalanche of complaints, the service recently introduced charges for professional representatives who bring more than 10 complaints a year. However the charges are still low and will likely do little to deter speculative complaints.

The body is also working with the Treasury and FCA to try to 'modernise' the dispute resolution process to improve complaint handling but there is little detail on this and it sounds like a weak response.

So why does all this matter and why is more robust action needed? Isn’t it the right of every consumer to complain? This is true but I’ll suggest one possible solution later.

Does it matter too for Financial Planners and Financial Advisers? It certainly does with strong recent evidence that CMCs are beginning to turn their attention to financial advice firms such as wealth manager St James’s Place and others. CMCs will be licking their lips about the decades of financial advice cases that might come their way, of that I’m sure.

So what’s to be done and does anything need to be done?

There is no doubt that this is growing and costly problem and will require national action to prevent vexatious and speculative complaints rising inexorably and clogging up the financial services sector as the years pass. It could well be the case that the recent growth in CMCs reaches a level where it distracts decent financial advice firms and providers to such an extent that it requires huge resources to deal with it. This will push up costs for all and could well deter financial advisers from taking on more clients.

Of course, there is a right to complain but one solution could be to restrict this right to the formal channels provided by the FSCS, FOS and other bodies which deal with complaints. Complaining direct to these bodies is free and complaints, to the best of my knowledge, are handled fairly and professionally. For most people there is no need to use a CMC or other professional representatives. This needs to be stated and agreed by government and the regulators.

This might require a change of law but if there is a fair, free and professional complaints handling process, possibly with a legal right to appeal a judgement if needed, then I see no reason why complaints from CMCs cannot be rejected and consumers directed to use a beefed up FOS complaints system. Few consumers would object to a fair and free system being available.

One thing is sure, however, without tough action the prospects are grim. An avalanche of complaints will do little to improve advice standards in the UK and could just prove to be the worst news for legitimate, professional advisory firms.

• Thanks to the many of you who took part in our annual Financial Planning Today Reader Survey. We'll be publishing the results in the next issue of Financial Planning Today magazine soon and we'll also be announcing the winners of our prize draw to win £50 M&S vouchers. We'll also be making a charity donation to a food bank charity as promised. Details in the near future. The survey is now closed.

> Follow me on Twitter / X at @FPT_Kevin for breaking news and key updates

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Carly Dunningham: How to be the voice of calm amid the chaos

2025-04-02T07:25:11+01:00

In this regular column for Financial Planning Today, new columnist Carly Dunningham, chair of the CISI's Financial Planning Forum, looks at the 'calming' role Financial Planners can play in clients' lives amid a seeming sea of chaos. You can read this article and more top content in the latest issue of Financial Planning Today magazine.

In an increasingly uncertain world, I believe as Financial Planners we can play a vital role in keeping clients calm and focused on long-term goals.

With global tensions rising and political shifts creating instability - such as Donald Trump’s influence on international affairs and fears of escalating conflict - many clients feel anxious about their financial security.

Closer to home, the UK government’s recent announcement that pensions may fall under inheritance tax (IHT) from 2027 has sparked concerns, leading some to consider drastic actions like large pension withdrawals to gift money now.

At times like these, our role as planners is more important than ever. Clients look to us for reassurance, guidance, and a steady hand. Rash decisions made in fear can have long-term consequences.

Premature pension withdrawals, for example, could lead to unnecessary tax liabilities, loss of compound growth and reduced retirement income. Making decisions based on short-term headlines rather than strategic Financial Planning can be costly.

Instead of reacting impulsively, clients should be encouraged to take a measured approach. Education is key - helping them understand that policy changes may take years to come into effect and could even be reversed by a future government.

By maintaining clear, open communication and reinforcing the principles of long-term planning, we can help clients make informed choices rather than emotional ones. Our job is not just about managing money - it’s about managing emotions and providing clarity in a world that often feels chaotic.

Now, more than ever, Financial Planners must be the voice of reason.

Carly Dunningham is a Chartered and Certified Financial Planner. She is the new Chair of the CISI Financial Planning Forum and a voice for the profession.

https://www.cisi.org

• This column first appeared in Financial Planning Today magazine, Mar-Apr 2025 edition. Carly's column appears in each issue of the magazine. You can subscribe to the magazine by registering for this website and then checking package options.

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Editor’s Comment: To delete or not delete…

2025-02-21T13:33:21+00:00

To delete or not delete (emails) - that is the thorny question the FCA has had to face and a move which forced one of its senior execs to defends its email deletion plans this week.

The FCA came in for stick recently for disclosing that it would delete routine emails from April.

This was mainly to meet GDPR requirements not to keep emails and other information longer than was necessary, but also to keep on top of a mountain of 70m emails stored on its servers.

I suspect many firms are wrestling with these very issues of what to keep and what to delete, when it comes to electronic information, so the FCA is not alone on this. GDPR has forced financial firms to review their policies to avoid leaving huge amounts of information lying around indefinitely with no purpose.

Emails are, of course, a modern burden in many ways. I seem to spend half my life deleting old emails. They can also be vitally important to communication, of course.

One of the criticisms of the new FCA email deletion policy was that the FCA was holding itself to different standards than it does regulated firms. Giving itself permission to delete millions of emails but asking regulated firms to keep hold of theirs.

In a blog issued this week, Ian Phoenix, FCA director, intelligence and digital, denied this and emphatically denied any accusations that the FCA is trying to hide evidence and avoid scrutiny.

It’s worth pointing out here that the FCA is planning to delete only routine stuff that arrives in inboxes, message from colleagues for example asking if someone wants to pop out for a coffee, that sort of stuff, along with non-essential emails. It wants staff to ask whether they need to keep emails older than 12 months in future, a more active email management policy if you like.

Key regulatory emails and information will still be stored, for at least 25 years and there are back ups maintaining copies of deleted emails.

The FCA currently has millions of staff emails stored in FCA inboxes and much of the information is of "low value," he said. No guffawing at the back please.

‘Essential’ operational processes which run through shared mailboxes will remain out of scope of the new policy, he said.

He added that criticism the FCA was applying different standards to itself than it does to regulated firms was wrong.

He said: “Critics have suggested we’re holding ourselves to a different standard than the firms we regulate. This isn't the case. We expect firms to take their record keeping obligations seriously and, as the regulator, we do too."

One thing he did promise to do was keep the policy under review.

Of course, all firms are now subject to the GDPR and other data protection policies. This makes the new world of data management a little more difficult to navigate.

Mr Phoenix’s explanation of the changes seems sound enough and many will understand the change and sympathise with it. Presumably regulated firms can adopt a similar strategy but that’s one for the FCA to confirm.

In the meantime it’s a good reminder that the management and protection of emails and other data in a digital world is becoming increasingly important and is clearly a sensitive topic.

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CISI's Carly Dunningham: Dealing with client bereavement

2025-02-07T07:16:41+00:00

In this regular column for Financial Planning Today, our new columnist Carly Dunningham, chair of the CISI's Financial Planning Forum, shares some personal reflections on how planners can help clients coping with grief.

As Financial Planners, we play a vital role in our clients' lives, helping them navigate complex decisions.

Our profession demands clarity, focus and a deep commitment to addressing each client’s unique needs.

However, life can throw challenges our way too, and bereavement is one of the most profound. Balancing grief with being at your best for your clients can be incredibly challenging.

This is something I experienced first-hand following the loss of my mum this year. It has been a deeply upsetting time for me and my family, bringing a wave of complex emotions that have affected my focus, energy and ability to be present with others.

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Grief is not something you can compartmentalise, and learning how to navigate these feelings has been essential for my personal and professional life.

Grief affects everyone differently. It can cloud judgment, sap energy, and disrupt focus - qualities critical to a Financial Planner’s role. Acknowledging and understanding these impacts is the first step to managing them effectively.

Being open with colleagues and management can also foster support.

While the instinct to "push through" might be strong, delegating tasks or adjusting workloads can help you meet client expectations without overwhelming yourself. These adjustments are not a weakness but a practical approach to maintaining professionalism.

Interestingly, personal grief can deepen empathy and strengthen connections with clients, especially those dealing with sensitive issues.

This is certainly something I have found and by navigating my own challenges, I feel I’ve become more compassionate towards others and better equipped to support them.

Carly Dunningham is a Chartered and Certified Financial Planner. She is the new Chair of the CISI Financial Planning Forum.

https://www.cisi.org

• This column first appeared in Financial Planning Today magazine, Jan-Feb 2025 edition. Carly's column appears in each issue of the magazine. You can subscribe to the magazine by registering for this website and then checking package options.

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Phil Billingham: Dealing with out of date providers

2025-01-16T08:09:34+00:00

We have had an interesting interaction with a very old fashioned provider this week. Our client had discovered that they had a couple of Child Trust Funds with this provider but were struggling to get any information.

The fact that they had moved house, and the two bits of paper we could see had different addresses, may have had a bearing on that.

No problem, let’s get Letters Of Authority, and we can see what is going on, and make sure the money does not actually get lost in some admin rabbit hole. Imagine our surprise to have an email back to us – and this is a direct quote – that says:

“Please be advised that it is our Company Policy not to provide information to any third party even if a letter of authority accompanies the request.”

In translation – “We will refuse to honour client instructions even if that results in harm to our clients.”

Now let’s just forget about Consumer Duty for a minute. What sort of arrogance does it take to tell clients not to bother giving written instructions, as we are much too self-important to bother to comply?

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And just in case the word ‘Arrogance’ seems a little harsh, the next paragraph was as follows:

"Please note; There is no availability to transfer agency or servicing rights on any (name withheld to protect the guilty) policy as we do not use the services of Independent Financial Advisers."

And it’s in bold here because they put it in bold in their email.

How astonishing is it that they think that IFAs somehow exist to provide services to legacy providers, rather than looking after the interests of those that actually pay us – our clients? So arrogant is a good word.

I then went and looked at their reputation online. Which is mixed. What was interesting was that their Trust Pilot reviews are full of praise for the ‘Free Advice’ that they are giving their clients.

So my questions are:

How did this – and other 19th Century firms – obtain exemption from applying the Law of Agency?

How did they obtain an exemption to FCA rules in disclosing costs and fees?

Is it only these old providers that can claim exemption – or is this available to anyone?

Now all of this is a bit tongue in cheek, and I do get that they are just desperately defending their declining role in the market. Horse carriage makers probably did the same when cars were invented.

But for those of us of a certain age, it brings back memories of the old ‘Industrial Branch’ firms of the 1980s and 1990s. Their culture and processes could not cope with increased consumer sophistication and just withered in the face of regulation.

Seeing it again was a real blast from the past – like seeing a Morris Marina on the roads….

It goes to show how far we have come and how much better for consumers 99.9% of our sector is now than before. We have experienced true Darwinian evolution, in that only the ‘fittest’ (most adaptable) survived, and now deliver – with a few exceptions – far superior service to consumers at much lower costs.

Long may the trend continue.

Phil Billingham FPFS CFP Chartered Financial Planner, Chartered Fellow (Financial Planning) is a Financial Planner and a director of Perceptive Planning, a Chartered Financial Planning firm based in London and Essex. https://www.perceptiveplanning.co.uk/

Biography: Phil joined the profession in 1982 and is a past director of the Institute of Financial Planning (IFP) which merged with the CISI in 2015. He is a past member of the Financial Planning Standards Board (FPSB) Regulatory Advisory Panel. He is a specialist in helping advisers cope with regulatory change and has worked with advisers, planners and regulators in the UK, Europe, USA, Canada, South Africa and Australia. He writes this column most months for Financial Planning Today.

Editor’s Comment: Risks and rewards of targeted support

2024-12-13T18:58:42+00:00

The FCA is clearly inching its way towards breaking down the boundary between advice and guidance with the aim of giving more ’targeted support’, as it calls it, to millions of pension savers.

Its announcements this week have been widely covered and point towards a new approach to pensions guidance.

This could bring benefits but also, as some commentators have pointed out, risks too.

You can read about the plans on Financial Planning Today but in essence the regulator wants to give firms the ability to provide more ‘guidance’ support to pension savers, mostly to stop them making mistakes with their money.

We know that since the Pension Freedoms were introduced in 2015 that many thousands have withdrawn their pension in cash and shifted it into a bank account. Some have also invested in all sorts of unsuitable investments or been horribly ripped off by pension scammers.

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This does not mean the Pension Freedoms were necessarily wrong but they have been a green light to all sorts of changes, not all of them good.

Giving ‘targeted support’ to millions, as the FCA puts it, will restore some balance and might just help a few people avoid blunders like leaving all their money in cash or just leaving it in poorly performing funds.

The principles behind the changes are sensible and if they help some people manage their pensions better and avoid running out of money in retirement will be a step forward.

Having looked through the proposals in detail, I do not think that holistic, highly qualified Financial Planners have anything to worry about. If anything the proposed changes, not yet confirmed, might bring more enquiries from potential clients who have received some guidance and now appreciate the value of more comprehensive advice.

One concern which has been raised is whether the introduction of more guidance or 'nudging' will mean some sales-hungry firms turning the guidance into sales pitches. That will be a risk and the FCA will need to ensure that its laudable aims are not subverted. This will be a tricky balancing act to manage.

Some pension savers will no doubt be encouraged, or perhaps ‘inspired’ is a better word, to make changes to their pensions. This should give them a better deal but will some turn round and say their provider prompted them to make a change which was ultimately to their detriment?

Perhaps, but the prize of millions more people getting some support - rather than none at all - is worth taking some risks.

• The latest issue of our Financial Planning Today magazine can be viewed here: https://bit.ly/2ZdVXWz.

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Editor’s Comment: Time for a non-dom rethink

2024-12-23T12:22:48+00:00

I’ve always believed that we should look after the wealth creators; the entrepreneurs, the business starters, the self employed, the pioneers, the creative people who spot a market opportunity, the professionals who launch new services and start-ups.

Some of these people are non-doms.

Without their wealth creation and the new businesses and taxes they generate it’s very difficult to fund public services and encourage entrepreneurship.

It is, of course, a balance between looking after the wealth creators and ensuring that the wealthy, pay their fair share of tax. I’ve always agreed with the line that legal tax avoidance is perfectly sensible and part of good Financial Planning. After all an ISA or a pension is a way of avoiding tax with good outcomes for the nation as a whole.

It's not an scam to pay only the tax that is due but it is a responsibility to pay your fair share of tax.

I have no time for tax dodgers and people who deliberately shift assets around the globe or into artificial vehicles just to avoid paying any tax at all. These are the cheaters in life and I understand why Ms Reeves is after them as some will indeed by non-doms.

I suspect Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been wrangling with all these issues over the past few weeks.

In her Budget she announced, with little surprise, a widely-expected crack down on non-doms. Both main parties have announced regular attempts to crack down on non-doms over the past few years, often followed with little real success or an admission that it's not easy. Usually they intermingle efforts to crack down on non-doms with efforts to hit tax dodgers. They are not the same thing.

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Ms Reeves may have assumed that cracking down on non-doms, as she did in her Budget, would nudge many of them to pay more tax and stay here. Sadly that doesn’t appear to the case.

By all accounts we’ve seen an exodus of millionaires in the past year with 10,800 quitting the UK, up 157% on 2023, according to the Times. That may also be a portent of what’s to come and that would be bad news. A huge exit of wealth creators is not a good look.

Ms Reeves may have forgotten that these non-doms, who are living here perfectly legally, have passports and can live virtually anywhere. It’s even easier than it was with many jurisdictions selling citizenships to anyone with the cash. So Ms Reeves may have very few non-doms left to try and tax and that’s a problem.

One interesting aspect of all this is that many non-doms are, apparently, particularly worried about the IHT changes planned by Ms Reeves which could see the tax benefits of wealth transfer in the UK undermined.

In our report this week, Marc Acheson, global wealth specialist at Utmost Wealth Solutions, put it succinctly when he said: “Many of our clients have been exploring other jurisdictions in the EU and UAE. This community would rather not leave the UK and contribute significantly to the Exchequer, so any review of those changes, particularly with reference to the erosion of IHT protections on existing settlements, would be welcome.”

With all this in mind, it was no surprise Ms Reeves announced in Davos this week she was having a bit of a rethink.

Ms Reeves may be right to try and pull a few more feathers from the golden goose but killing the goose is a never wise move.

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