Research published by Aegon reveals that 53% of wealthier (not exactly defined) individuals are confident managing their own finances.
The most common reason stated for not employing an adviser was cost (33%) then lack of trust (24%). 21% said they no longer needed financial planning advice.
Although NotHarry, of choice, has far too few subscribers to carry out a similar survey and get meaningful results, the discussions I have had with people over the last couple of years have included all of the above reasons for discontinuing an IFA relationship.
The function of this web site is to give those who have advisers some insights that allow them to keep an eye on the value for money they are getting, or not as the case may be. Beyond that, the material available offers insights from a long time investment professional that are intended to be helpful to those who are running their own portfolios.
In fairness to advisers, the same survey reported that of those wealthy individuals who had an adviser (17% of the survey group), 94% were happy with the service they received.
I would always a maintain that good investment and financial planning advice from an experienced and well qualified professional is worth paying good money for. The problem I have noted is that the really good value advisers all have full client books.
The remaining vast majority who do a rather inadequate job of filtering people into centralised investment propositions that have no obvious merits in return for excessive fees have also become rich on the back of consumer naivety. That is partly because we have had more or less rising (bull) stock markets since 2008. All that will change before too long.
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