Perception of advisers needs to change to close advice gap - OpenMoney report

The online advice service company's research, carried out in conjunction with YouGov, found many British people associated negative words with the term financial advice.

Frequent words used to describe financial advice of the 2,081 polled included ‘expensive', ‘untrustworthy', as well as more aggressive terms like ‘rip off', ‘con', ‘scam' and ‘money grabbing'. That said, positive words were used, such as ‘help', ‘expert', ‘trust' and ‘managing money', but these were largely outweighed by the negatives, OpenMoney said.

The poll found one-in-10 (10%) of the 2,000 respondents had taken paid-for advice in the last two years, while the majority (79%, up from 77% in last year's report) of those who had not said they were also unlikely to in the future.

Of those who said they would be unlikely to pay for advice in the future, to encourage them to seek an adviser one-third (35%) said they would need to be sure it would save them money overall and 21% said they needed to earn more. One-third (31%) also said they would need to trust the advice, 21% would need to be sure how to pick the right advice and 17% would need it to cost less.

OpenMoney CEO Anthony Morrow said: "Despite the negative perceptions of financial advice, when people take specialist money advice the vast majority have a good experience. If the industry is to close the advice gap and help improve people's financial futures, we first need to tackle the perception gap.

He added: "Changing these negative associations and promoting the positive work our industry does is crucial to ensuring that more people access regulated financial advice and make the most of their money today and for the long-term."

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