- The FCA has announced a holistic review of the advice/guidance boundary for financial services
- In a speech yesterday, Sarah Pritchard, Executive Director of Markets at the FCA, said the authority wants to “understand how to reduce the regulatory burden while continuing to provide the right level of consumer protection.”
- Hargreaves Lansdown plans to help shape a future regime for more personalised guidance
Anne Fairweather, Head of Government Affairs and Public Policy, Hargreaves Lansdown:
“For a long time, Hargreaves Lansdown has recognised that the advice boundary is a barrier to our ability to guide clients towards better outcomes. Whether it is pointing clients to a lower cost index tracking option or reducing the risk that clients run out of pensions savings too soon, there’s a bigger role firms can play supporting their customers. This review is a big opportunity to demonstrate how innovation and data analytics can guide people with their financial choices. We see this as a crucial step to help savers and investors in the cost-of-living crisis and support the nation as we rebuild our financial resilience in the longer term.”
Background to a future regime for more personalised guidance
HL’s vision is to transform the savings and investment experience, combining the best of human expertise with digital capability and delivering a uniquely personalised service – this will redefine the client experience and with it, wealth management. To deliver this, we are strengthening our core proposition and driving additional growth by expanding Investment Solutions, accelerating Active Savings, and launching Augmented Advice and Guidance.
Our understanding of the market and client insight show us that the market is at an inflection point: client expectations and demands have been accelerated by the pandemic, the service gap is widening, regulation is shifting, and technology is transforming.
From where we sit as the market leader, there’s a huge untapped opportunity to help the UK build financial resilience, especially against the backdrop of continued economic uncertainty and concerns about the basic costs of living.
Augmented Advice
HL’s new solution will bring a best-in-class digital experience to the advice market: like an advisor in your pocket, it’ll bring together the best of digital and human at our clients’ fingertips. It will offer hyper-personalised nudges both through education and, with the appropriate information and context, regulated advice.
Clients will have easy access to an expert human advisor in the moments that matter to them, integrated alongside the digital experience. The levels of personalisation will amplify over time, with more data and developments like Open Finance.
Why now?
The advice market is currently sub-optimal: the main barriers to getting advice are that it’s either too complicated, expensive, and inaccessible, or in the case of robo-advice, over-simplified and lacking a human touch.
