The thinking behind our #langcatlive event last week started with one question: Who benefits?

Amid all the change seen by advice firms, platforms and providers over the past 20 years, are we materially further forward in serving clients and consumers better? Or do we have to confront the reality that, at least to some extent, old ways of working and thinking are still hampering progress?

We spent a lot of time trying to tease out the answers to these questions last Thursday. Our Question Time panellists were among those charged with coming up with those answers, and kick-starting the debate on what we all need to get better at.

Drawn from across the industry and with a variety of perspectives, the panel was challenged by attendees (live and online) on a number of fronts, including:

- Why don’t consumers trust the financial services sector?

- How do we drive engagement in pensions?

- What next on ESG advice?

- Can small advice firms and financial practices survive?

- How, ultimately, can we change financial services for the better?

Our panellists were:

- Anthony Rafferty, CEO, Origo

- Jo Little, CEO, Emery Little

- Sarah Lyons, chief marketing officer, Parmenion

- James Daley, managing director, Fairer Finance

- Sheila Nicoll, head of public policy, Schroders

They were brilliantly hosted by Financial Times consumer editor Claer Barrett.

You can watch the full session below, or read on for a taster of what they had to say.

On trust

To find out what real people make of the financial services sector, we commissioned some exclusive consumer research, carried out by YouGov and kindly supported by Schroders.

We’ll bring you more on this research next week, but one of the findings was the general feeling people have that financial services runs for its own benefit rather than that of the consumer or client.

Asked what could be done to drive more trust, Parmenion chief marketing officer Sarah Lyons said:

“I don’t think we help ourselves sometimes. If I think about a ‘simple’ thing like a pension transfer, and I think about the regulatory responsibility that lies with all of us in terms of the disclosure we have to give. Is the customer actually interested and do they need to know and understand all that, or do they just need to understand the outcome they are heading towards?

“I then think about the processes and the structural challenges we have in the industry around how long that takes to complete. For example, in the case of an in specie transfer, sometimes a client doesn’t know where their money is, or when they’re going to be able to get their hands on it.

"When those kinds of things happen to our customers, and they don’t know what’s happening to their money, I think we need to look at ourselves and ask: What could we do better?”

Schroders head of public policy Sheila Nicoll pointed to the Edelman Trust Barometer, which measures trust and credibility across sectors in 28 countries.

She said: “That study concluded that distrust is now society’s default emotion. In the last 10 years, trust in anything has declined. This is especially true for trust in institutions like us, especially where we’re saying ‘trust us, even though you’re not going to see a result for 15-20 years’ and yet we’re endemically in a world of distrust.

“You don’t trust what you don’t understand. In terms of what we can do about it, I’m not sure education is necessarily the thing, although that is an important aspect. I prefer the word engagement. It’s about getting people to engage with us, the language we use, the way we communicate. Yet we hand over Key Information Documents that people don’t read and can’t view on their phone. It’s about reaching people where they are rather than expecting them to come to us.”

But Fairer Finance managing director James Daley took issue with the argument that trust is lacking everywhere, and felt that let financial services absolve itself too easily.

He said: “To suggest that the public is distrusting and so the industry is getting swept away in that wave of distrust probably gives a bit too much credit to the industry. There are pretty good reasons why people distrust financial services companies, such as a lack of transparency and overcomplexity.

“People distrust politicians because they lie, people distrust journalists. There are good reasons for distrust, I don’t think it’s just that people are distrusting of everything. The financial services industry has to get its house in order.”

James said he was hopeful about the prospect of the Consumer Duty, and that if it works it will restore trust in the industry.

He believes the rules will force firms to ask themselves difficult questions about things like overcharging, and whether explanations to clients and customers are being given in a way they can actually understand.

On the pensions dashboard

Earlier in the day, the lang cat’s Tom McPhail sat down with pensions minister Guy Opperman (you can listen back to the full interview in all its glory here), with the minister suggesting the government had to drive the delivery of the pensions dashboard as the pensions industry wasn’t doing it on its own.

So what has stalled the progress of the dashboard so far?

Origo CEO Anthony Rafferty said: “The disclaimer from me is I’m a superfan of the dashboard, and Origo is now beginning the work to build the core architecture. I think it’s the biggest catalyst we’ve got to get people engaging with their financial futures.

“But the answer to this lies this in when the pensions dashboard was in doubt – there were rumours it was going to be canned and was no longer going to be government sponsored. I then wrote to the 25 biggest pension companies in the UK, and managed to get 24 of them into our boardroom. We asked them: ‘If this doesn’t go ahead with government backing, would you join an Origo-led version of the pensions dashboard?’

“They all said: ‘Yes, but we need the government to legislate because we don’t trust other pension companies to do it.' They worried that if it was just them providing the data, it would put them at a disadvantage. They needed the government to legislate to compel everyone to provide the data.”

On regulation and small advice firms

Against a backdrop of rising regulatory costs like the cost of professional indemnity cover, more and more advice firms and financial planning practices are being approached by consolidators on an alarmingly regular basis (as borne out in our latest SOTAN report).

Emery Little CEO Jo Little discussed how the advice sector was changing from her perspective. She said the influx of private equity money and the rise of the consolidators meant it was difficult for smaller advice firms to compete.

She said: “I don’t think it’s necessarily realistic for someone who has founded and grown their financial planning firm for decades to suddenly feel like they should ‘do the right thing’ and choose a smaller firm to take on their client bank.”

Jo added it was also unrealistic for the FCA to increase the regulatory burden on financial planning firms and then expect those firms not to increase their fees as a result.

She said: “That is directly opposed to what they want to happen, but that’s just not the reality of the situation. I certainly don’t know of any financial planning firm which is actively lowering their fees, and the majority of firms I speak to are having to increase them.”

Jo also talked about the proliferation of financial posts on the likes of TikTok and Instagram, and how this feeds into the conversation around regulation.

She said: “I do come across a huge amount of financial content on these platforms, and the majority of it is completely unfounded. But these are non-regulated individuals, there is no accountability, they can say whatever they want with absolutely no recourse. I think that is a big problem we are facing.”