As a partnership, we try to insure that all our advice and dealing with clients is clear, fair and simple.
Inform, educate, empower?
We are really different!
Most businesses have a story, a reason for them to exist that makes them different or more appropriate for their intended clientele. Some businesses are the result of a flash of inspiration, a calling or possibly a “Road to Damascus” moment.
Martin-Redman Partners was born out of frustration with financial services as it stood in December 2012; stuffy, untrustworthy, overly-complex, ridden with jargon and full of unpleasant surprises. Some things we tackled head-on, others require a longer term view, but in all things we try to inform, educate and empower.
Taking care of business
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater; political soundbites vs. The law of Unintended Consequences
Those of you with long memories may remember back in January 2014 Chuka Unumma, (Labour MP for Streatham and briefly a candidate for Labour leadership), using parliamentary privilege, accused all of the large recruitment companies of exploiting workers by pressing personal accident and sickness policies on them. Back at the time there was a big fuss in the press and now all recruitment companies are violently allergic to any insurance add-ons, for fear of being accused of profiteering again. Vince Cable promised an investigation by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, but I am struggling to find any details of a pending report, so either it is still on-going or little was found.
Outside the box - what does an IFA actually do?
Clients often tell their financial adviser things they probably would not tell anyone else on the planet. These additional bits of local colour vary from the trivial; “I’m petrified of spiders, could you get the one out of the bath”, to dramatic revelations like the existence of a second family, 80 miles away or an impending divorce, long before solicitors are instructed.
Our cost of investment advice
The mainstream press and now the trade press are full of comments and hand-wringing about the recent Which? report finding that the majority of financial advisers do not publish fees on their websites and are very reluctant to discuss costs before a face-to-face meeting.
As advisers we have tried to be transparent, with a fee comparison on the website, but internal discussions have shown us clearly that this is far from easy. (See here).
Messages for the press
One of the things that raise my hackles is being stereotyped as a crook. A comment piece in The Telegraph by Richard Evans, "Don't trust your financial adviser the way your trust your doctor", is one of those times as “financial advisers” are described as
“utterly unscrupulous purveyors of financial snake oil”.
Such people do exist and I have done my bit as a compliance officer and reporter of scams to the authorities to get them away from the public, but both Mr. Evans and the general public need to understand where the lines of regulation lie and the limits of consumer protection.
Our advice process
Pleading the case for income protection
Income protection seems to be the Cinderella of protection policies, with most commentators concentrating on life cover. This is absurd as death is unlikely during your working life; being unable to work through illness or accident is much more common and a specific type of protection insurance has existed since the late Victorian Era to address it.