McCay said people were open to the ‘people like me’ recommendations and suggested that targeting support propositions may help advisers reach investors who want advice but do not have large assets.
This is where investors are able to get generalised financial advice through a service that recommends a single product or course of action suitable to them at a lower cost.
She said: “The traditional advice pipeline is that if you want personalised advice then you’ve either got the assets to receive that today or that you have high income but are not rich yet, but we expect those people to receive traditional advice in the future.
“Then we have got the people who want help but are unserved. They are people who want personalised ongoing advice but realistically don’t have the assets for advice firms to deliver that. It wouldn’t be commercially viable. So, what we are suggesting that would be more helpful for this group would be for firms to use targeted support propositions to help them get a bit further ahead in their journey.”
MacKay said: “The biggest opportunity in terms of the financial advice gap and what might hoick some people out of it, is targeted support. We think this will help over five million people in the advice gap. It is a big number.”
The data found that more than one in five non-advised consumers say they are willing to pay for help.
This could be because trust is less of a barrier than it used to be. The data found that trust concerns have declined as 22 per cent reported this as a barrier in 2019 compared to just 15 per cent this year.
MacKay said this confirms the need for advice firms to make the case for why financial advice is important.
She said: “We found more than half of investors would consider getting financial advice in the future, so it is not a closed door. There are people who are there to be persuaded.
“A large number of people don’t consider financial advice because they don’t see what it would do for them. We in the industry assume that people know what financial advice is and that is not correct.”
Aamina Zafar is a freelance financial journalist
