\n<\/p>\n
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Simply sign up to the UK financial regulation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.<\/span><\/p>\n Millions of British savers will be able to access \u201ctargeted support\u201d under sweeping new rules to help individuals get better returns on their money, as companies including Hargreaves Lansdown and Vanguard gear up to offer such services.<\/p>\n Unveiling one of the biggest shake-ups of investment advice for a decade, the Financial Conduct Authority said it would allow companies to make generic suggestions to consumers without having to meet all the costly restrictions involved in providing personalised financial advice.<\/p>\n The move, which the FCA called a \u201conce-in-a-generation\u201d change to the UK\u2019s financial advice market, will mean companies can, for example, suggest to groups of people sitting on too much cash that they could put some into shares to get better returns over time.<\/p>\n The development comes more than 10 years after the FCA\u2019s Retail Distribution Review, which aimed to drive up standards of financial advice but ultimately drove up its cost and left many people unable to afford such services in an \u201cadvice gap\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n The FCA said the new regime was designed to help the more than half of British savers who told a recent survey that they wanted more support on how to invest their money. <\/p>\n The regulator estimated about 7mn British adults had more than \u00a310,000 in cash savings and no investments, adding that between 13.5mn and 30.6mn people could benefit from targeted support.<\/p>\n The regulator said it would consult on creating rules for the new activity of targeted support by December, allowing companies to make generic suggestions to groups of similar consumers.\u00a0<\/p>\n This would no longer be caught by the onerous requirements involved in providing a \u201cpersonal recommendation\u201d to customers, including having to carry out detailed suitability assessments.<\/p>\n The FCA also plans to create a second, more targeted, category called \u201csimplified advice\u201d that allows firms to make financial product suggestions to customers based on a quick review of their \u201cessential relevant facts\u201d, without doing a full suitability assessment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dan Olley, chief executive of Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK\u2019s largest \u201cDIY\u201d investment site, said the proposals \u201cwill be truly transformational in kick-starting a thriving retail investment culture in the UK\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is clear there are key life moments where too many people are caught in the advice gap, unable to afford financial advice, but needing more guidance than the rules allow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n According to Barclays, some 13mn of UK adults are holding about \u00a3430bn of cash, based on savers who already have more than six months\u2019 income in savings, which could be put to work in investments.<\/p>\n Tom Selby, director of public policy at AJ Bell, said \u201cthe existing regulatory framework makes it difficult for firms to offer anything beyond relatively basic information\u201d to customers who are not using a financial adviser. <\/p>\n The FCA said it aimed to authorise targeted support services from April 2026, though its work on simplified advice would take longer. It estimated some 100 companies would launch targeted support services, many of them for free, and said they could cross-subsidise the cost of providing them in the price of other products.<\/p>\n Recommended<\/p>\n James Daley, head of consumer group Fairer Finance, said the changes were \u201cthe right direction of travel \u2014 but they must be implemented with adequate safety rails to protect consumers\u201d. He added that customers needed to \u201chave the confidence that these routes won\u2019t be a gateway to exploitation\u201d.<\/p>\n Jon Cleborne, head of Vanguard for Europe said: \u201cThese proposals are key to helping more people access the benefits of long-term investing and achieve successful financial outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n More than 40 per cent of people aged over 40 admit to making almost no financial preparations for retirement, according to Verona Kenny, chief distribution officer of Aberdeen Adviser. \u201cThis seems like the best chance in a generation to tackle the problem,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the UK financial regulation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Millions of British savers will be able to access \u201ctargeted support\u201d under sweeping new rules to help individuals get better returns on their money, as companies including Hargreaves Lansdown and Vanguard gear up to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[325,752,2312,1790,1372,2311],"class_list":{"0":"post-9768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-advice","9":"tag-biggest","10":"tag-decade","11":"tag-financial","12":"tag-launches","13":"tag-shakeup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}