Sound Financial Group Blog

Product mis-selling is rife within the financial planning industry so what is the best way for a consumer to find objective advice on their financial position and advice on how they can make best use of their finanical resources to achieve their lifestyle objectives.....without the need for product at all.

Financial planning and NOT product selling... is the mantra that we have been repeating for many years now. Once again we have seen more evidence of financial product mis-selling from the recent BBC Panorama programme which highlighted how the major banks consistently give  poor advice to consumers in their drive to ‘sell products’ under the guise of financial advice or planning.

A timely reminder of the scale of the problem comes in the form of the recently published figures from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), which shows that of all the complaints made to them during the past year, a whopping 65% relate to so called advice from the banks. The report also revealed that the FOS handled 4,000 consumer complaints and enquiries each working day! This totals over 1 million in the year of which around half relate to the alleged mis-selling of PPI with again the big banks billed as the main culprits. Of all the complaints received just 1.5% related to Independent Financial Advisers (IFAs) which at around 15,000 is still too high a figure, but this is in contrast to around 650,000 that relate to banks.

Unfortunately the problems of mis-selling will probably not disappear sometime soon as IFAs, IFPs and Wealth Managers target their proposition at the ‘top-end’ of the consumer market. This naturally leaves the majority of the mass affluent and other less affluent members of society to the mercy of the banks and other direct sales organisations...and so the problem continues, unless the regulators start taking this a little more seriously.

The answer for consumers is to seek out financial planning advice from an appropriately qualified financial planner who will give them objective advice on their financial position and advise them how they can make best use of their financial resources to achieve their lifestyle objectives...without the need to sell them a product at all. This is where fee-based financial planning is in everyone’s interest. 

If you wish to discuss your own financial planning strategy or would just like a second opinion on and how you can reduce your chances in the mis-selling minefield, please contact us and take advantage of a no cost or obligation meeting.