Congratulations! You are about to read your one millionth tenuously Barbenheimer-themed article about something far, far more boring.
Like all the other people out there struggling to remain relevant, I did the Barbie/Oppenheimer thing the other day. I know you didn’t come here for a film review but, for my money, Barbie is a work of post-modern genius; Oppenheimer a bit of an Oscar-courting slog.
But then, I’m aggressively pursuing the next Verve Award for Britain’s Wokest Financial Adviser, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
It got me thinking, though. We’re a bit like Ken aren’t we, us advisers. Constantly agonising about our true value, our individual identity. Born into the world as a mere adjunct of something much bigger than us.
We’ve failed, collectively, to take that next evolutionary step
If Ken can’t exist without Barbie, can advisers exist without evil insurance businesses and fund groups, which openly still see us as distributors?
Some of my contemporaries, who I respect a lot, make a compelling case that we can. I hope we can. But would it be too unkind to suggest all this agonising over the true value of advice as a profession is a kind of variation on Matt Hancock desperately murdering ‘I’m Just Ken’ on his TikTok?
We should be way, way beyond this by now, but we really don’t help ourselves. Despite all the new waves of regulation and themed reviews, as well as pockets of good practice, I think we’ve probably failed, collectively, to take that next evolutionary step.
Look at how readily big firms reskinning suspiciously pre-RDR-like charging were accepted by us all. Whacking great up-front advice charges were collectively deemed ok if you call them fees not commission.
Finance bods still call our fees commission and I can’t decide if they’re deliberately having a dig
There seems to be a new model out there where large firms are charging 50 basis points (bps) for a downgraded “light touch” service which looks suspiciously like the old trail-commission-for-nothing model. By clustering round the 50 bps zone, they aren’t even being subtle about it.
Our language is still, somehow, steeped in the old-world distributor mentality. My back office calls me a “selling adviser”. We submit cases for “pre-sale checking”. Finance bods still call our fees commission, however they are arrived at, and I can’t even decide if they’re deliberately having a dig. And if they are, whether they’re justified.
We have depressing stories about new entrants leaving advice because sales culture is still embedded in large parts of the industry in a way that simply isn’t the case in the proper professions we want to be like. We all know plenty of outwardly decent firms that are a lot more asset hungry then they would have you believe.
The thing that really kills me is that I truly believe, among all that nonsense, there are great advisers doing far better and more meaningful things for clients than any accountant or solicitor.
There’s something menacing out there off the shores of Barbie Land
I’m increasingly convinced that anyone receiving something approximating good service in regulated product land is only getting it because an intermediary is ruining their health and wellbeing trying to offset the pervasive awfulness of providers. Anywhere else, we’d be a 10.
Our professional body could have done a lot more to help us articulate and promote planning as a profession, instead of spending all that energy eating itself from the inside out. What will it take for them to see the man behind the tan and fight for me?
Unfortunately, I’m not convinced the direction of travel is positive. There’s something menacing out there off the shores of Barbie Land. I have this creeping feeling that one unwelcome byproduct of scam regulation and Consumer Duty will be a land grab from the same old terrible providers who want to reassert control over advisers.
Look at how readily scam rules which were designed to protect the consumer have morphed into a way for providers to slow down transfers, by suggesting a defined contribution switch to a large, far more ethically run platform, on the advice of a highly regulated adviser, is somehow dodgy because “er, something-something-offshore investments”.
It’s another worrying trend towards a world where advisers are de facto regulated by providers
I recently had to cough up my whole transfer case for a notoriously shady closed-book pension provider, and my client had to fill out a form which was clearly designed to imply I’m Billy the Kid bursting into their office twirling my pistols and lassoing Sarah the post lady.
Platforms are being asked to police advised accounts in ways that are (sadly) perhaps justified. But it’s another worrying trend towards a world where advisers are de facto regulated by providers.
Maybe we’ve missed our moment. RDR was a golden opportunity to move out of the shadow of providers, to shed our past as lowly distributors. As a community, I don’t feel like we grabbed it.
Providers resisted it because none of it was in their interests and now they may be firmly back in the driving seat. And maybe, after all that, we’re still just Ken.
Greg Moss is founder of Eleven.2 Financial Planning. He is a chartered financial planner and fellow of the Personal Finance Society
