How to stop people walking away from advice | Tea with FT Adviser

“At the very point where people need advice, they walk away from it”. This was a stark point made by Gillian Hepburn, head of UK adviser solutions and sales for Vanguard, on the latest episode of Tea with the FTA. Speaking to co-hosts Vanessa Barnes, founder of Hannay Wealth, and FT Adviser editor Simoney Kyriakou, Hepburn expressed her hope that targeted support and simplified advice would be a “stepping stone to full advice”. This might help people who have never had advice and who need help investing. However, she said she was always struck by how many people have experience of financial planning and have just “left”, particularly widows who, at the point when they most need help, leave their husbands’ former financial advisers. “I talk a lot about the situation where too many widows leave the adviser and you have to hope they go somewhere else,” she said. During the discussion, which is the last in the six-part mini-series, Hepburn said it was important for the financial services industry as a whole to help the millions of people who could pay for advice, but currently do not, understand the value of such a service. FT Adviser and the Women’s Wealth Alliance have teamed up to create a mini-series of vodcasts. The WWA, a working group of the Consumer Duty Alliance, has been tasked with a twofold goal: to help bring more women into financial services and to improve the financial resilience and education of women across the UK. This is no small task, as our series of six interviews, called Tea with the FTA, outlines. The FTAdviser Podcast is designed to inform regulated UK advisers on a range of topics, covering investments, pensions, regulation and other key issues. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.