He added: “I would not commit my business to a lower-cost mass market approach with open-ended lifetime liability to retrospective regulatory change. So until the FCA says ‘do this and you – adviser – cannot be touched in the future’, no one with any sense will go down this route. I do not think the FCA actually can do this because then it would be responsible for the advice and the one thing the government does not want is any form of potential future liability.”
For Robin Willison, a senior business transformation leader and former head of direct sales and operations at LV=, advisers should not worry about retrospective action from the FCA or Fos if they are professional in their approach. However, while he agreed that technology has a key role to play, he stressed that without human intervention such a service would be doomed for failure.
He said: “Automated end-to-end online advice is difficult to make work outside of straightforward vanilla and standalone solution, so it won’t by itself tackle the much larger ‘don’t know what I’ve got, don’t know what it is, don’t know if it is right for me’ consumer with existing investments, including those purchased through bancassurers. A large number – probably the majority – of consumers also still value a human voice to reassure and guide.
“Technology can help… but the customer will probably still need another human to help them load on the details of their investments, etc, onto a system or platform. You need human intervention at key sticking points. If we do not provide that all of the current and future online solutions will remain sub-scale and fail. Combining technology and people in a cost/income effective process that engages the customer will be good news for advisers, consumers and the regulator.”
Chris Williams, chief executive of Bristol-based Wealth Horizon, was also forthright on the importance of adopting technological solutions, and warned that such systems were essential to close the advice gap and change the nature of an industry that is “too rigid”.
At present, he said that large segments of society were “not being served appropriately” because the advisory profession was designed to fit business models rather than focusing on the needs of the consumer. Describing the current regime as an “all or nothing approach”, he warned that clients either had the option to pay for full advice or go without it completely, which “does not benefit anyone”.
“Clients’ needs are often very simple and these need to be met first, with additional augmented advice delivered as and when needed,” he added. “The industry, with the support of the FCA, needs to start exploring the middle ground and finding a solid platform on which it can build.
