An independent (financial adviser's) view

Those who know me well will be aware that I function poorly without my midday coffee and cake. I try in all other respects to live a healthy, blameless life, perhaps even qualifying as a member of what our Home Secretary calls the ’Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati’. But according to the Prof who’s chair of the Food Standards Agency (the other FSA with which our then-regulator was often confused), my slice of cake is the equivalent of the 20 Rothmans which I gave up many years ago. Just a banana, I guess, from now on. Anyway. Industry-insider readers will know that I organise something called ‘By an adviser, for advisers’ every few months, a get-together with benefits of around 30 adviser colleagues. One of the hot and vital topics we’ll be discussing at the next, this Thursday, is ‘whither the suit and tie for financial advisers in the modern age’. Your thoughts welcome; and don’t forget to fasten your seatbelt.

“Is life in the UK really as bad as the numbers suggest? Yes, it is”

In films, the lives of seemingly random characters often coincide, entwine and lead to a (in my favourites, at least) happy ending. So here are some random quotes, facts and stats from my reading this week: ‘In 1516 Thomas More?described the ideal health-care system, where “hospitals are well supplied with all types of medical equipment and the nurses are sympathetic. Though no one is forced to go there, practically everyone would rather be ill in hospitals than at home.” ‘Downing Street has warned health ministers they will have to find savings from their own budget if they want to offer?NHS workers more money in an effort to end the growing wave of strikes’. ‘Last year, ￡2.6bn of bonuses were paid to London investment bankers, the bailout of the banks in 2008 cost an estimated ￡137bn and the Bank of England has to date spent ￡895bn on its programme of “Quantitative Easing’”, buying government debt, often termed “printing money’’’.??Oh, and ‘Trains in northern England are less reliable than in war-torn Ukraine, figures show’. Just saying. And hoping for a happy ending.

“Brokers respond to Money Box presenter’s comments on finding a broker”

According to Paul Lewis of the BBC’s MoneyBox programme, to get a good deal, you should go to a big, national company, rather than a broker ‘over the local cab shop in the high street’. Now, there are good and bad advisers everywhere. If you arrange your mortgage or invest your money with one of those big, national companies, you may meet a great adviser you like and trust who sticks with you through thick and thin. You may prefer something less ‘relational’ (have I just made up a word?) and more transactional, with the knowledge that the company itself is big enough to still be around next time you need them. Those who come to us want, I think, a more personal service. And experience shows that, more often than not, the smaller, local company is as, if not more likely to be around next time you need them. Whatever happened to those armies of financial advisers in banks, who would happily flog you whatever mortgage or product you’d buy until a few years ago; or to the Man from the Pru, come to that? So, Mr Paul Lewis of BBC’s MoneyBox, small can often be beautiful. And things have, I think, moved on. There really aren’t that many brokers ‘over the local cab shop in the high street’ any more. In fact, I can’t remember when I last saw a cab shop in a high street. Uber rules. KO.

“‘Nightmare’ inflation eases slightly to 10.5%”

As many have already commented, Rishi’s promise to ‘halve inflation by the end of the year’ is the economic equivalent of promising warmer weather in summer. Oil and gas prices are now below pre-Putin levels, China’s open for business again and those Covid ’supply chain’ issues are resolved or resolving; so it’s gonna happen, whatever. The effects of caving-in to/ compromising with/ recognising the hard work and dedication of (delete according to political view or politician’s audience) our nurses and others would not feed the fires of inflation, this year or next. Any decent pay rise they get is unlikely to send the average public sector worker on a spending binge which will push up prices; it will more than likely just let them keep the lights on a bit longer. If it all sounds like good(ish) news, remember, if inflation falls to 5%, that doesn’t mean prices are falling; just that they’re not going up so quickly. So don’t break out that bottle of Prosecco you’ve been saving for next Christmas quite yet.

“Top 10 FCA Fines 2022”

Here’s a Top 10 of which no one wants to be a part. Fines handed out by the FCA totalled almost ￡216m, all of which goes to the Treasury’s ‘Consolidated Fund’. Where it goes from there seems a little unclear, and there have been calls on a number of occasions for it to be channelled back to cover the regulator’s running costs and so reduce the fees which the likes of us, and therefore ultimately you as our clients, pay. By far the biggest contributors are banks had up for anti-money laundering failings, who, in this respect, have become ‘the usual suspects’; and there’s an insurance broker in for the same reason and a couple for pension transfers into dodgy investments, another very usual suspect. The depressing thing is that, although the list of banks changes (last year Nat West, this time Santander), the reason for the fines this year is pretty much the same as last. Which seems to imply that a) the fines aren’t working and/or enough and therefore b) they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it in the first place. In the words of The Stranglers (kids etc.), ‘Something Better Change’.

This is the heartbreaking yet inspirational true story of the Mardini sisters, two Syrian teenagers whom we see at the start of the film in training to swim for their country, coached by their father and living a happy, prosperous family life. Flash forward a couple of years, and the awful civil war has brought shelling, power cuts and made the school bus a dangerous daily nightmare. So the sisters feel they have little choice but to join the thousands trying to escape to Europe, to Germany where, if they make it, they can apply for their family to join them. To get to Europe, they have to pay people smugglers a fortune for a seat on a dodgy inflatable. And to save the others as it starts to sink, the girls, ‘The Swimmers’ jump out and swim many dangerous miles to Lesbos; then walk (really) from Greece to Berlin. And once there the younger, Yusra, actually qualified to swim in the Rio Olympics. What a film and what a story. I cried and cheered, and both my hand and heart rarely left my mouth throughout. Your main thought will, or at least should, be that every day desperate people are paying for places in leaking boats to escape adversity and try for a better life. And how lucky are we not to have to do the same.