Monday 20th of February 2006

To me it seems there are two trends developing in the financial services area which are to some degree anti-adviser. One is the emergence of online financial services - a la Rabobank and my previous post. The second is insurance companies' desire to sell direct to the public. Tower has talked about it being a growth part of the business. Asteron has done a deal with AA in a joint venture (which is direct via telephone and the Internet) and I see over in Russell's Blog some others are mentioned as having had success selling directly. So in insurance there is evidence of more emphasis on direct sales. Rabobank has been my example of investment sales online, but the AMP announcement last week adds another dimension. It says two strong areas of its business are life and workplace savings. Managed funds are being trimmed back. I suspect what AMP is saying will be repeated by others. Workplace super and KiwiSaver are going to be big. My question is how do advisers get a piece of the action? My view is that some of the smarter ones will sell services to employers on a fee basis, but the majority of advisers will miss out on this growth area. These are quite high-level thoughts at the moments - or observations - and need to be developed further. Is a trend developing? I'm interested to know what others think. Email your thoughts on this idea to blog@goodreturns.co.nz (The comments section of the Blog has been turned off for a while due to spammers being a pain and making lots of irrelevant posts).