The Other Side…..
Posted on:
18
Feb
2012
by James Farmer
It isn’t all doom and gloom on the client’s side of the desk, you know. Richard Harvey keeps his head held high, his hopes aloft, and his tongue firmly in his cheek
The first pension policy I ever bought was from a guy whose qualifications for selling financial products were about as robust as Graham Norton’s expertise in heavy engineering. But he did play for the England cricket team.
In the financially freebooting days of the ‘60s, the ability to score a ton off the Aussies or bang in a few goals for a top soccer side were the most desirable attributes for a broker, the theory being you’d be far more likely to buy a policy off a sporting superstar than some dull chap with a shabby suit and a wife and three kids in suburbia.
And you did. Or at least I did, enthusiastically encouraged by my dad, who ran a pub frequented by professional sportsmen, many of whom became sales reps for pension providers, booze companies and, for all I know, snake oil manufacturers.
Like most 18-year-olds I was rather more exercised about my chances of carnal engagement and lager consumption (things don’t change, do they?) than documents postulating what my income might be when I finally got to retirement age.
And, boy, did those documents postulate! As I recall, there was a dazzling array of projections, showing how my fiver a month would grow at a rate of 15%, 20%, even 25% a year, leading me to a promised land of riches when I finally pulled on my slippers and cardie.
I never did discover what that policy would finally yield, because I cashed it in two years later in pursuit of far more worthwhile goals (ladies and lager).
However, other pensions that I purchased a few years later did perform well, albeit not at the hysterically optimistic rates outlined in that first policy.
So here we are, in a brave new world of IFAs, RDR and regulatory rigour, where client advice is carefully dispensed and nobody is loopy enough to expect stratospheric annual returns (apart from Bernie Madoff’s clients).
“You’ll be lucky to get more than 5% on your investments this year” is the refrain.
Wonder if I can buy a savings plan off Freddie Flintoff?
* * * * * * *
For a card-carrying optimist like me, it’s been challenging in recent months to smile bravely in the face of the financial gloom constantly peddled by the media.
We’ve endured an unremitting news agenda of a faltering economy, rotten savings returns and the apparently terminal decline of the euro (although, be honest, you have to smirk a bit at the sight of Monsieur Sarkozy squirming at the loss of France’s Triple A rating). It’s enough to make you reach for the gun and the whisky bottle.
And yet the stock market has defied all those ‘meltdown’ headlines. UK car production is up 8.6%; retail sales proved surprisingly buoyant despite gloomy pre-Christmas forecasts; and while the public sector has shed 276,000 jobs in the past year, the private sector has created 262,000.
So while it’s not yet time yet to crack open the champagne, maybe we can at least permit ourselves a small glass of something appropriately refreshing?
