HOW PERSONAL IS PERSONAL BANKING?
Summary
Apart from not being a good offer, but a very similar (yet still more expensive) cost to a proper advised investment, it was a bit of a pity that nobody had thought to ask what I did for a living. You will recall that in the past most mis-selling scandals were directly to do with poorly trained and badly incentivised advisers within Banks. Financial planners generally deal with people that are already engaged with planning ahead or have recently started to do so – and there are not that many of us anyway – about 24,000 for a population of around 66m. Imagine how difficult this is for elderly people that have little appetite for the internet or online banking and are not able to easily get to their new nearest branch. If you are someone with a few hundred thousand in cash, then of course the Investment Banks are now interested in you, but you will quickly discover that to them personal means treating you to sports events and corporate hospitality in exchange for some over the top fees.