Last year the regulator sounded alarm bells about “significant clustering” around price points and certain types of services in the financial planning universe, suggesting ongoing fees may be the default option for clients.
It said, almost exactly a year ago, that such clustering was hindering the number of people who seek advice. In terms of price clustering, the watchdog admitted it can reflect a healthy market where competition drives advice services to specific price or quality points. However, the FCA added at the time its analysis indicated that ongoing services with a 1% annual adviser charge did not have noticeably different features to those charging 0.5% annually. Take part in this week's poll on DB transfers This was also the case for one-off advice offerings where services charging 3% did ...
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