The FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) have set out new rules which define ‘independent advice’.
This is defined as an ‘unbiased and unrestricted, and based on a comprehensive and fair analysis of the relevant market’. This is designed to reflect the idea of genuinely independent advice being free from any restrictions that could affect their ability to recommend whatever is best for the customer.
An ‘Independent Financial Adviser’ needs to reflect the range of products that a consumer would expect an independent firm to have knowledge of. The FCA have introduced the term ‘retail investment product’ into the handbook.
This includes not just packaged products, but also structured investment products, all investment trusts, unregulated collective investment schemes and any other investment that offers exposure to underlying assets, but in a packaged form which modifies that exposure compared with a direct holding in the financial asset.
Advisers can use panels to help review the market and we do not expect a firm to review the market for a product that does not meet the client’s needs and objectives.
Pinnacle Wealth feel it important to remain truly ‘independent’ as we feel our clients value this fact.
