STEPHEN CRANSTON: Evolving advice
If designated fund managers work, advisers can focus on their area of competence, which is sales
I used to assume, perhaps naively, that going to a financial adviser would be similar to going to your GP. Just as you leave your GP’s office with a prescription specifying the antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and tranquillisers you need — down to their brand names — so, I thought, you would leave the financial planner’s office with an appropriate unit trust "script" for your financial needs.
That was often true in the days of the Old Mutual and Liberty agency forces. Ironically, they had very little of what we now call agency, as they were spoon-fed prepackaged endowment policies. I once owned a Liberty equity endowment which had zero transparency...
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