Graham Bentley: There is only one reason your business exists

The FCA's recent declaration of intent to focus on competition and charges has, predictably enough, raised some advisers' hackles. The ‘price of advice' has been discussed at length in the trade magazines, with most advisers taking a defensive stance in the comments columns - generally via a sentence featuring the word ‘value'. Commentators have remarked on the narrow distribution of adviser fee data. Certainly, it is remarkable that, in an industry of vastly different businesses and client profiles, the most common pricing structure is virtually identical to the pre-RDR commission rate ...