Regulation  

Regulator must 'lead the way' on advice gap

When asked what sort of questions open up those conversations, Bowen said it was not "that hard" to bring the subject into the consumer's views - because the consumer, the client, should be at the heart of the conversation from the start.

Castlefield has an ethical questionnaire as part of the fact find, which aims to discover what sort of areas clients might be interested in supporting and avoiding. 

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She said while this was not a complete list, merely "indicative", it did allow clients to talk about what is important to them.

"This means we can have meaningful conversations with them, embedding this in our knowledge about them, and it can be put on file."

Advice gap

But Bowen said "more to the point is that there simply are not enough advisers" in the UK to start having those sort of conversations with more people in the first place.

She said: "We knew what was going to happen with the Retail Distribution Review around the corner. It hasn’t been addressed and robo-advice is really a red herring, as it is just presenting investment options.

"It is not advice - it is helping people make investments, but financial planning is so much more than that."

Financial advice is bespoke and intricate and expensive, she said, but she could not see how simplified advice could address it.

She says: "Clearly as an industry, we are going to have to develop more tech and AI to address the gap."

She added: "Again, the regulator is going to have to lead the way to help people move from pure transactional financial choices towards holistic planning.

"Even if you had a form of simplified advice based on AI, who will pay for the technology? Is it just the vertically-integrated firms?

"But even with a transaction, you need a clear structure about blame and accountability and responsibility, and only regulation can provide reassurance around this, making sure this is not open to abuse."

simoney.kyriakou@ft.com