Is financial advice a business or a vocation? It needs to be both

After a certain three-letter reform package, we started talking about professionals rather than salesmen - and rightly so. But now the conversation appears to have moved on again. Planners are the custodian of hopes and dreams, the last bastion of sanity in a quagmire of financial confusion, the only sure path to financial and personal wellbeing.   Those individuals that help clients realise their true aspirations in life through the medium of financial planning are an exalted bunch, and are worth every penny and more. Modern advisers have been known to compare themselves to doctor...