WEEKLY UPDATE

There has never been a better time to be an IFA, writes Charlie.

In 2018 AVERAGE  revenue per adviser in UK was £181k (source FCA) and although this dropped slightly in 2019, the most recent IMA report says that gross sales of investments rose by 14% in the year to 2020.

And 80% OF ALL new investment new biz is still intermediated in the UK.  According to the same FCA source, this services 1.2m initial advice services, and 3m ongoing clients. That makes 4.2m serviced by just 25k IFAs, or 168 clients each.  The 15% market rise in November is a reminder that all these firms are worth precisely 15% more than they were in October.  And all this in spite of the IMA’s claim that index strategies now reach 30% of all assets under management!

Good news indeed!

But what makes us particularly bullish is not the incredible surge in new business activity at IFAC but that Covid and Brexit point to one thing -our country is in the middle of a shake up to innovate and grow its way out of debt.  

Innovation needs regulation, but regulation is overdue innovation.  

Brexit and Covid will put that at the top of the agenda again, where it was when David Cameron became prime minister and promised to abolish the FSA.  That never happened, because the appetite for regulation grew with the ongoing city scandals that took a decade more to resolve. That decade has ended, and we can look forward to 2021 with the confidence reflected in the recent stock market surge.  The market is never wrong.