High Investment Guidance Fees are a Thing of the Past With the Launch of a Free to Use Investment Website

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• Publié par: money-guidance
• Nombre de lectures: 10
• Langue: English

Extrait

High Investment Guidance Fees are a Thing of

the Past With the Launch of a Free to Use

Investment Website

PR Newswire

LONDON, June 14, 2012

LONDON

,

June 14, 2012

/PRNewswire/ --

For the first time, a brand new website is offering free access to investment

planning tools to help consumers avoid expensive guidance costs from financial

advisers.

Changes to legislation by the Financial Services Authority from

1 January 2013

,

means that financial advisers will have to transparently charge for services -

such as risk profiling and cash-flow planning software - where previously the

charges were bundled together as adviser commissions and fees.

The new website, http://www.money-guidance.co.uk, launched on 11

th

June

2012

will offer these services free of charge to help consumers build their own

investment profiles before making meaningful investment decisions.

Philip Dodd - author of the website and a financial services professional for over

thirty years - is adamant that investors need a planning framework. The price

of accessing this is currently expensive, therefore pushing up adviser fees to

unnecessarily high levels.

Dodd commented: "With commission structures largely disappearing at the end

of this year, advisers are being told to `segment clients or perish'. So, with a

large swathe of investors being cast adrift, their choice will be between a trip to

the bank or a `do-it-yourself` strategy. It is essential that investors equip

themselves with greater knowledge and techniques - after all, it`s unlikely there

will be anyone more interested in their financial well-being than they

themselves."

A recurring theme of the website is the need for the investing public to focus on

driving down costs. This means avoiding the practice of buying last year`s

winners in favour of a disciplined, longer term strategy, which ideally uses

index-tracking funds. It also involves investors saving fees through doing more

spadework themselves, and not relying exclusively on financial advisers to

provide the lead.

The site also makes topical financial information freely available, as evidenced

by the regularly-updated "Media and Research" and "Blog" sections.

For more information see http://www.money-guidance.co.uk.

NOTES TO EDITORS

http://www.money-guidance.co.uk

offers access to the highly-rated risk profiling

system, FinaMetrica, as well as to Voyant`s sophisticated cash flow life-planning

software, entirely free of charge.

The change in legislation on

1 January 2013

is that the Financial Services Authority

will be implementing the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) which, among other things,

will ban the payment of commission in its present form and ensure that payments for

advice emerge as a result of Adviser Charging - i.e. a contract for services between the

adviser and the client, rather than the adviser taking commission direct from product

providers without the need for the client to sign this off directly (as at present).

The RDR will also insist on minimum (QCA Level 4) qualification standards for

advisers, one consequence of which will be the exodus of thousands of advisers who

cannot meet the requisite examination standards.

http://www.money-guidance.co.uk