Jonathan Fry: A fair day's pay for a fair day's work

If there is one important lesson, I have learned during my time at the coalface of running an advisory business, it is that people vary considerably in the way they understand price and value. Consider Hargreaves Lansdown and St James's Place, for example - both have built substantial businesses, yet each has a very different approach to pricing. For many years, particularly those prior to the implementation of the Retail Distribution Review, Hargreaves was hugely successful in attracting customers with its simple - and unrelenting - message: dealing direct would cut out the middleman an...