[Weekly Wrap] Why don't Kiwis like advisers?

At the NZFAA conference in Auckland, the organisation revealed the results of a survey it had commissioned Horizon Research to conduct.

It found financial advisers were considered one of the least trustworthy professions in the New Zealand, and 70% of the people who don't use an adviser can't see the point. Even more worryingly, the research found that about a third of those who did use an adviser saw no benefit from doing so.

Horizon research manager Grant McInman told the conference:  “I’ve never seen anything as vitriolic as some of the comments we saw about financial advisers.  They were really nasty and I can’t print them.  I was really quite surprised by some of the reaction.”

This is probably, as our story points out, a result of the global financial crisis and finance company failures. Many people probably still feel burned by investments that went sour. But turning this around should be a top priority for the industry.