IFAs plan legal aid-style financial advice service

This is a super thing to do (well done chaps) but it did prompt a question in my mind which was "Isn't this what The Money Advice Service is meant to be doing?"

See,.... RDR does have some benefits afterall,...!!

Stop me if I am wrong....but isn't Legal Aid paid for by the Government and not Charities?

...and as Nick said - it's a role for Money Advice Service?

Good Luck with your venture!!

"It's not debt planning" I rather think it will become debt planning used by a lot of people who either can't handle debt, want more debt or want something for nothing. Come on is this serious?

Excellent - this will help people see that Life Planning is very different from Life Coaching. I look forward to hearing how Life Planners can help you.

Money advice service does not actually provide advice though - so a free ADVICE service to the people who it would be fair to say probably need it most would be a commendable thinkg to achieve.

I do wonder though how deep the charity's pockets are.......

Excellent idea. Power to your elbow. A positive counter to the culture of greed perceived by the public as present in financial services, even in the IFA sector. Perhaps a few bankers and FSA hierarchy would like to contribute to it from their hard ( or hardly ) earned bonuses ! !

Does this not imply that commission based products do have a place in society, in so far as it provided "free" advice, or more correctly allowed commercial enterprises to spread the cost of advice over a long period. Is this the providers creating an alternative by feeding the "commission" to a charity as a tax deductible charitable donation.

It is also an acknowledgement that RDR is for the wealthy, since the Life Planning foundation see a large enough segment of the market being without access to advice to warrant launching a charity.

But what is the target market. If a person does not have sufficient money to afford advice, they surely have insufficient money to need financial advice. Yet even a charity providing advice is going to need a significance income just to meet the regulatory cost requirements of providing product based advice.

I would tend to agree with Another 1 that it is likely to become a debt counselling service.

Legal Aid is about having the resources to right an immediate wrong, and has a specific objective. Financial planning is more long term and generally quite unspecific in its objective.

I wish the participants well, but I suspect this is yet another example of middle class do-good thinking trying to deal with a working class problem. It normally ends up going nowhere.

Mmmmm!

One wonders exactly how it is going to be funded and who is going to be able to make money from it. Legal Aid was designed to assist the poor gain access to legal advice, this doesn't sound anything like that.

The ordinary working families need our services probably more than NHW clients who can afford "LIfe Planners" although what that means in the real world is beyond my simple brain, if a client needs to plan for a decent income in retirement the ideal vehicle is a pension plan with its tax relief, that is a product, which needs to be researched and sourced properly, convincing people they "have a life worth living" doesn't really come into it. If they need debt counselling then that is what they should seek out from qualified debt counsellors.

IF we are to move from a Transactional basis for financial planning, to one based on "advice" without product purchases, one has to wonder how the Life and Investment firms are going to survive, if there is no incentive or reward other than an hourly fee and no continuing remuneration from clients to keep the business solvent, what are we actually going to be doing in a year from now? Financial Planning without product purchase?

Life and Investment firms need to consider building in to their costs "Adviser Fees" and we all need to consider what is a reasonable "fee" for our time, expertise and the continuing liability we all seem to have now for advice, which due to market conditions no longer meets the expectations of clients going forward.

I think these guys are on a hiding to nothing as far as keeping the business profitable is concerned.

I am not normally negative, but the RDR has changed everyones perspective of their own future now, no longer can a business owner rely on a good sale price for their practice in future, because what are they going to sell?

Many iFAs will fold and their clients will desert them once the clients find out they will have to fork out from their own pocket for future advice and services.

A very worthwhile ambition, but I question some of the reality. Yes the life companies will perhaps want to support a charity - so long as they end up with some product sales out of it.

IFA's already do this type of work but are acused of cross-subsidising and told it is not 'appropriate', but I believe many will continue to provide a level of basic service to clients and potential clients without an initial chagre.

What will 'qualify' the user - total assets, or disposable income levels, or willingness to spend for advice?

I wish all good things well but I feel that whilst this is a very applaudable motive, I am not sure of what it will really deliver.

The reality is that it will be a great way to train your life planning skills.

Life planning can't be used so easily on the seriously wealthy, unless you know them very well. I'm sure Kinder can do so, but that's because he has the experience.

This is a great way to get experience. As for the rest....next

This is a long overdue development and congratulations to the founders of what I hope will be a worthwhile endeavour.

There has been an obvious gap in RDR in that there has been no equivalent to Legal Aid put in place to allow fee based advisers to give advice to those who cannot afford to pay but need it nonetheless.

I don't believe, based on my experience to date, that the Citizens' Advice Bureau or the Money Advice Service can, or will ever, fill the gap left by a financial adviser when dealing with most critical financial planning situations such as advice on reposession, tax, pensions or investments that have not met expectations.

At the moment I provide that advice free of charge (about 30 hours this month on repossession and help with Self Assessment alone - call me stupid but I can't send these people off to look on a website and wait for the baliffs) and I'll be interested to see how the project develops, especially from the point of view as to how the charity is funded and claims are entertained.

I wish you the very best. look forward to seeing your progress.

Some one said to me the other day something I had not heard for quite some time "Life Cover and Pensions have to be Sold they are very seldom bought."

The drop in sales of PPs and Mortgage Life Cover prove it is true.

If we can help to educate the value of Protection or Planning it has to be good.

good luck Adam from the Lord ;-)

The Money Advice service doesn't provide advice, but it prevents clients from seeking advice. Most people dont know what the options are for say taking retirement benefits so The Money Advice Service will enable them to get quotes for annuities or term assurance and then directly contact the "best provider"

This actually means the client can buy the wrong product if they knew the options that were available....but hey !!! so what !!!! they've received no advice so dont have a leg to stand on.

I am slightly confused as Legal Aid is paid for by the Government and lawyers make some very tasty profit from this, often well into 6 figures per annum I am not going to say its abused but then you never know.

This service will be funded by providers have been given business by many Ifas, so in reality its the profits generated by our clients who are going to subsidise this firm of IFAS. Does this mean thet their fees will be vastly reduced (as with Legal Aid) or is it another way of Ifas marketing to a group of individuals who are perhaps not as wealthy as the market which we all aspire to.

I dont mean to be cynical its just that I cant seem to get my head round this one.

In summary is it not just the equivalent of a bunch of lawyers saying-guess what as we cant all get the wealthy client lets focus on the poorer ones and see if we generate wealth in that manner. If we can generate volume we can make a profit.

I stand to be corrected

Isn't this to a degree what many advisors do now pre RDR although it is not life planning.

We all know that the bigger case subsidises the smaller cases that we do so the client with £100,000 annuity purchase helps offset the costs of the smaller client with say £30,000 annuity purchase (same amount of work bu not much in it for us taking into account costs and time spent etc).

I know that I do some pro bono work as we can afford to offset it against commissions and fees paid by others so we give our time for nothing.

This is a fair system as I see it however it will almost certainly go under RDR where the clock is going to be counted against all advice given whether or not it is taken, and as I see it fees are going to be squeezed by clients.

Just a second thought, the difference between solicitors and accountants etc is that the public need their services as the systems are too complicated to work within. Accounts, conveyancing do it yourself divorce etc. It will be good to see how you educate the public that they need our service but I think that getting it for free is not particularly educating them in the correct manner.