You may have noticed the recent news that Lloyds Banking Group is to stop offering investment advice in its high street branches to customers who hold less than £100,000 in savings and investments. Barclays made a similar move last year, announcing it would stop giving financial advice to individual customers in its bank branches.

Both decisions are directly related to an overhaul of how financial advice is given, known as the Retail Distribution Review or ‘RDR’ for short, which comes into effect at the beginning of 2013. This has meant the banks’ costs are likely to rise at exactly the same time as they will have to be more explicit about how much their advice is costing customers.

Given the attention these sorts of announcements are receiving in the media – not to mention the increasing number of articles on RDR appearing in the press – I thought this would be a good time to address the subject with you and explain the changes you can expect to see as a client of Expert Wealth Management as a consequence.

The RDR is specifically designed to improve people’s understanding of, as well as increase their confidence in, financial advice. It aims to raise the level of professionalism among financial advisers so the minimum qualifications required are being increased and the way in which you pay for that advice is being altered to ensure complete transparency.

This will affect all financial advisers to an extent. However, the reason for my getting in touch here is that much of the reasoning behind high street banks deciding to withdraw from in branch advice does not hold true for all advisers – particularly ourselves.

At Expert Wealth Management, much of the groundwork for this has already been done – for example,our continuous professional development programme means all our advisers are already qualified to Chartered level well above the new minimum requirements.

In terms of payment for our services,meanwhile,the conversation is well under way with clients about how the new rules will work – although we are confident we have always been very open with you about the cost of our professional advice and how those charges are met.

It should however, go without saying that if you have any questions about the new rules, are concerned what they mean for our working relationship with you or would just like to talk to us about any investment, tax or other financial matter, please not hesitate to get in touch.

October 2012