Controversy over a widening gulf between those who need financial advice and those who can actually afford to pay for it has been branded "not advisers' problem" by industry veteran Geoff Mills.
Advisers have long cited the advice gap as an unintended consequence of - and so reason against - rule changes designed to make the industry more professional, like the Retail Distribution Review (RDR). Central to adviser dissent about the RDR was that its higher qualification requirements and ban on advisers being paid via commission on the financial products they sold, would lead to higher costs, pushing advice out of reach of the mass market. Since the rule change, advisers have either tried to come up with cheaper service options for lower value clients, along the lines of the bur...
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