About 70% of South African consumers, compared with 66% globally, don’t know whom to trust when it comes to financial planning, according to The Global Consumer Survey recently released by the Financial Planning Institute of Southern Africa (FPI).
Founder of The Financial Coach, Gregg Sneddon, says consumers are wary of financial professionals because they have often previously been sold a product that has not delivered, or found out that the process could have been done differently and at a cheaper rate.
Since the industry was not regulated in the past, advice given by financial professionals was not always up to standard, notes Wouter Fourie, chief executive of Ascor Independent Wealth Managers in Pretoria and 2015 financial planner of the year.