Buckles unveils pilot to smooth way for simplified advice

It's "face to face interaction" that is crucial.

I hope it works for them but without a sea change in regulatory attitude I worry that it will be fraught with problems in terms of understanding and disclosure.

At the moment the FSA is viewing Twitter and Facebook with suspicion so a fundamental shift will be needed I fear.

Full marks to Buckles for giving it a go as the mass market is going to suffer even more from the predatory banks post RDR.

It may well be, Sean - but at what price does it stop becoming crucial?

Therein lies the admission: that the RDR will see vast swathes of our UK society priced out of receiving full advice on a face-to-face basis.

This is the new world; finding new ways of engaging with customers. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Excellent Idea. I think this is exactly what the Market needs. Fact Find on line and then a decision tree, with comforting words, no cup of Tea though.

The Catle Keep of independence takes another hit.

Someone has to fill the gap that RDR leaves behind. Good on Buckles for giving it a go and trying to make it work.

It's only a matter of time before we see the Providers rebuilding their direct sales forces to target the middle market to compete with the banks and those advisers delivering restricted advice.

Roll on a few years and I believe someone in authority will be saying that RDR did not deliver benefit to the average man on the street. Now we didn't see that one coming.

I'm with you Jon

But let's be honest, is RDR really about the average man in the street?

He goes into a bank and gets striped up now so heaven protect him after RDR. The banks as major provider/distributors seem to have an unhealthy amount of influnce on how RDR has shaped up since first beeing mooted

I keep reading comments about how the Banks will have life easy and sewn up after RDR. This is to deny the actaul requirements of RDR. Any advisory firm, whether independent or restricted, and one assumes that for the most part the Banks will offer restricted advice, will have exactly the same qualification and adviser charging rules applied. My personal view is that the word 'restricted' - selected after much customer research - does indeed give a clearer indication of the nature of the serive than the previous 'tied' label. And the adviser charging requirements will mean that even the Banks wil have to state the cost of advice explicitly and separately from the cost of the product / fund. So even if they use an in-house priduct that prodict will be 'factory gate' i.e. clean of advice costs and the costs of the product, historically often higher than those used by IFAs, will be clear to the customer. I don't se this as anything other than good news for IFAs and I just wish that people would actually read the RDR papers and understand the requirements and outcomes before going into print with half truths and prejudices.

I can see this going full circle,with the Financial Services Act being repealed.

Then we will just start all over again the way it was before regulation became virtually a separate (and expensive) industry.

The acid test will be whether any lessons have actually been learned along the way as the new model (i.e. the new version of the original model) develops.

Or am I just a cynic?

Alistair

The banks have regulatory requirements already but it doesn't seem to make an awful lot of difference to what goes on at ground level. RDR will not change this.

As for reading the RDR papers and understanding requirements and outcomes, I have spent hours and hours reading the original documents and subsequent re-issues. For one I have a clear understanding of what RDR purportedly seeks to achieve.

At the end of the day, the current retail banking model is about flogging products full stop and it's been going on for years. Until this model fundamentally changes, nothing else will change. Banks will pay lip service and carry on as before.

If that's a half truth or a prejudice in your book then so be it. It is however my experience of having worked for a bank, seeing the results of bank's 'advice' on a regular basis and having an employee who has joined us from a bank recently who confirms that nothing has changed.

Restricted advice is an oxymoron in this context. Restricted sales is a much more accurate description - why do you suppose the FSA dropped the idea of differentiating between advice and sales. Not many IFA's suggested this was agood idea but I'd be pretty certain the banking lobby did and guess what happened.

How about sending Sants to a War Crimes Tribunal and burning all banks to the ground - will that make you happy ?

Oh as an afterthought lets get the Government to pay advisers to give financial advice to the poor people who cant afford the £200 per hour for " advice"

Presumably all will be sweetness and light if advisers no longer have to prove to the public that they are so much better than the banks and are actually as good as they think they are ?

Phil

It gives me real pleasure to supporet you on this one!

Oops - support. Come on Michelle give us a spell checker!

Duncan,you are right that there is regulation covering banks already but it is for the very reason that this has not stopped the sales culture that the RDR is being implemented. Alongside the banning of commission, the FSA is currently working on rules to penalise bonuses and sales drivne culture. Inevitably, this is like an arms race and most commentators accept that even the heavy (but watered down at least in the US)new banking regulations will dampen 'financial creativity' for a year or two but that money. human nature and greed will eventually out and ways will be found to meet the letter of any rules but not necessarily the spirit. What frustrates me is the constant refrain about how bad the banks are instead of a focus on how good IFAs can be. Banks have been bad - I have never worked for a bank, having an IFA background, but I did run a complaints service for several years and it was undoubtedly the Banks that had the most complaints and the worst practices - but there were some very poor goings on in IFAs as well, especially smaller firms where the complaint was investigated too close to the place that the poor practice had occurred! So I am not surprised that your employee reports that nothing has yet changed in the Banks - RDR is 2.5 years away and the Banks have not made much visible progress to implementing its requirements in advance. In this respect they are no different to the majority of IFAs, where commission is still the norm.