June 2006
This month’s topics
IFAP June 2006
Update Newsletter
Welcome to our first electronic edition of IFAP’s Update newsletter. By going online we can help you interact more quickly and effectively with IFAP activities which provide opportunities of particular interest to your business.
Throughout this and future issues, you’ll see links to find out more information, to get involved with our campaigns and, most importantly, to ensure the information we’re providing to potential new clients about your firm is as accurate and advantageous to you as possible.
In addition, of course, this electronic format is more cost-effective, meaning we can devote more resource to our core objectives of generating targeted new business for member IFAs and raising the positive profile of the IFA brand in the consumer media.
If anyone else in your organisation would like to receive future copies of Update direct to their inbox please ask them to register their e-mail address at www.unbiased.co.uk/email/.
If you are authorised to amend your IFA details, please refer to the Update Newsletter email in your inbox, and click the “Check your IFA Details” box to review the information IFAP is currently displaying about your firm to enquiring consumers and businesses.
Kind regards,
David Elms
Chief Executive @ IFA Promotion
IFAP’s latest new sponsor
We’re delighted to announce that Defaqto Ltd has become the latest company to sponsor our ongoing marketing programme, further boosting consumer awareness of the benefits of independent financial advice and how to find it.
Defaqto is an independent financial product research company that provides comprehensive and up-to-date product information to the financial services industry. The company has recently launched a service for IFAs, Aequos Engage, which you can find out more about at www.aequosengage.co.uk. As with the vast majority of our sponsor organisations, Defaqto’s website now features white label versions of IFAP’s ‘Find an IFA’ and ‘Find a Media IFA’ searches.
This takes the total number of life, pension, investment, mortgage, healthcare and IT companies currently sponsoring IFAP to 31. Click here to view a full list of IFAP’s current sponsors.
This month’s topics
As online takes over, don’t be over-taken
A new study by independent research agency, Ipsos MORI, reveals that more than one in four of IFAs’ target market (ABC1 adults) now go online first when looking to find out about financial advice. For the first time this is more than the proportion who head directly to their bank or building society.
In support of this finding, 92% of the half a million plus ‘Find an IFA’ enquiries we deal with each year now arrive through our range of online 'Find an IFA' searches, currently running on our own sites at www.unbiased.co.uk and www.impartial.co.uk and via white label versions of our service appearing on 53 high profile consumer-facing websites.
However, the important distinction to make here is that, while people are clearly most comfortable doing their initial research and finding the right adviser online, when it comes to taking financial advice, they still prefer to see an expert face to face. So far from representing a threat, the internet is a massive business opportunity for IFAs who want to attract new clients cost-effectively.
Consumers are also now more than twice as likely to view your IFAP entry if you are signed up to our Online Marketing Package. This is because users of our search can select to be shown only details of relevant local IFAs who also have email and website details displayed. This means that if you haven’t yet signed up to our Online Marketing Package you will almost certainly be passing up potential new business leads.
The figures stack up too! For an annual outlay of £249 + VAT you can promote your company details on all IFAP-run searches. With the average IFAP case worth £570 (Mercer Oliver Wyman), all you need is one case to more than pay for the whole year’s subscription. Benefits of the package include enhanced display, enabled web and email links, and a call-back facility. Click here for full details.
The income IFAP generates from the Online Marketing Package is all channelled back into promoting member IFAs and the IFA brand through our advertising and PR activities.
Less than two years since launch, already a third of IFAP members have signed up for our online promotional package. If you’re interested, click here to find out more, or call the member Hotline on 0870 325 9020.
Think you know where all your customers come from?
Do you really know where your leads are coming from? For example, it’s not enough just to accept that a new lead came via “the internet” or your firm’s website. How did they find you amid what is by far the world’s biggest store of every kind of information? Were they really looking specifically for your company when they started looking online?
Without asking the right questions, you cannot know how your potential new customers are finding you. And without knowing this, you cannot know where to focus more of your marketing resource. Or indeed just how productive your Online Marketing Package Subscription is.
Whether a potential new enquirer contacts you via your website, e-mails you, phones you or calls into your office you need to drill down to find out how they found your contact details. Did they get your contact details from www.unbiased.co.uk, www.impartial.co.uk or through one of the 53 white label online searches we’re running on partner websites? If so, how did they get there – was it as a result of these sites appearing at the top of any of the UK’s search engines, was it as a result of editorial IFAP’s placed online or banners IFAP’s running on the top financial sites or links from third party websites pointing people at IFAP? The chances are that, unless you are dedicating tens of thousands of pounds to a promotional campaign, your new enquirer will have been led through the online labyrinth to you by IFAP.
You can find out more about what IFAP is doing to market your firm online by visiting www.unbiased.co.uk/advisers.
IFAP’s report card from you
We’re always keen to hear your views on IFAP’s performance. So much so that each year we issue a questionnaire to all of our members, asking for feedback on the job we’re doing in terms of lead generation, promotion of the IFA sector and the range of additional services we offer.
Our fourth annual member survey generated 1,557 responses, an extremely robust sample to take soundings from. The responses were analysed by independent research agency Consensus.
Almost half (46%) of you think the ‘Find an IFA’ web search tool is a key benefit of IFAP membership, an increase of 12% on figures for the year before.
The survey also reveals that a massive 78% of all consumer leads generated via IFAP’s websites, white label ‘Find an IFA’ search tools and free phone hotline number resulted in business. 56% of respondents received between one and five new business leads from IFAP last year, and 17% gained six or more.
Similar to previous years, 61% of you view use of the independent financial adviser blue pound sign roundel as a key member benefit, with 82% seeing this as the symbol of independent financial advice.
It’s also great to see that almost four in five members voicing satisfaction with our efforts to educate consumers and support independence throughout the process of depolarisation.
61% of respondents support our Media Services initiatives, providing a hub for media to access informed comment and case studies from IFAs around the UK. This support is hardly surprising, given that already this year our online Find a Media IFA tools and hotline service have fulfilled well over 5,000 journalist enquiries, adding hugely to the positive profile of IFAs in the consumer media.
And finally, we were buoyed to find that 85% of Update recipients find our newsletter useful. We hope that the new, interactive e-version will prove even more helpful.
Your free qualifications guide
Over the past few months, we’ve been developing our database to hold details of further incremental qualifications held by member IFAs. At a time of much change in the qualifications framework, IFAP has been working closely with a variety of awarding bodies to ensure the data we supply to consumers is as accurate and comprehensible as possible.
With your co-operation, I’m delighted to say that we now hold verified details of over 18,000 incremental qualifications held by our members. These range from generic financial planning through to product-specific qualifications.
To reflect the evolving range of opportunities for members to demonstrate their professionalism and develop their expertise, we’ve produced an updated version of our ‘IFAs guide to incremental qualifications’, you can download your free copy by clicking here.
Around 30% of all online requests IFAP receives for details of local IFAs now specify that they want their personalised list of IFAs to each hold at least one incremental qualification, so we would urge all members to use this guide to learn more about how to go about obtaining them.
This month’s topics
Advice Drivers quarterly report
In the first quarter of 2006, IFAP handled 62,363 searches for independent investments and savings advice, a surge of 22% compared to the same time frame last year. Year-on-year appetite for independent retirement planning advice grew by 53%; thus indicating that A-Day’s far-reaching reforms did, in the end, have a marked impact on consumer behaviour.
These were the lead findings of our latest Advice Drivers report, based on an analysis of the 171,534 requests for details of local IFAs we handled between January and March 2006. However behind these headline-grabbing findings lies data on the whole range of business areas being selected by people using IFAP to find local independent financial advice.
Time and again, we’ve found this data a reliable bellwether for future sales trends. Hardly surprising, when you consider that the search for advice is the first link in a chain which ends in specific product sales. For this reason we recommend you keep an eye on our monthly “UK Top Ten Advice Needs” report, which we post here on our website every month.
Be Advised: Rounding off our campaign
A year on from the radical shake-up of the financial advice market by the FSA, 84% of UK adults say they simply don’t understand the different types of advice now available, according to a survey IFAP commissioned in late May.
However, happily the concept of independent financial advice is more popular then ever:
- 90% of people say that seeing an “independent” adviser is important to them
- 95% of people say it is important that the adviser can recommend the most suitable products from the whole of the marke
However the research makes clear that what people want is not what they’re getting. Of the 6.6 million people who saw an adviser in the last 12 months, 72% believe they saw an IFA, just 10% think they saw a multi-tied adviser and 13% believe they took advice from a tied adviser.
We issued these results to media to mark the anniversary of depolarisation, and to round-off our 18 month Be Advised campaign which is attempting to educate people about their advice options. However, our research illustrates, very simply, the need for a broader consumer education campaign to ensure people get the type of advice they would like.
TaxAction 2006 update
After our best media reception ever to this year’s TaxAction campaign launch, reported in our last edition of Update, we’ve already rolled out two further stories from this year’s campaign.
The first used the Budget as a topical hook to reveal Britain’s most resented taxes – petrol duty, the TV licence fee and IHT. However the real purpose of our story was to highlight the many ways people squander their money simply by not being more tax-efficient.
The survey also shows that, although 31 million British adults resent their rising tax bills, over three quarters (78%) admit to taking no action whatsoever to limit the amount of tax they pay.
Saturday 3rd June was so-called Tax Freedom Day, and we used the theoretical point in the year at which the average taxpayer stops working for the government to urge individuals to look at reducing their tax waste. By doing so people could bring their own Tax Freedom Day forward substantially.
Visit www.taketaxaction.co.uk to find out more about our ongoing campaign.
Get Saving! campaign update
Our latest Get Saving! campaign story suggested that the concept of a “financial safety net” was in tatters, as just 19% of UK adults would rely on their savings if a financial crisis struck, and only one in ten say they would try to claim on a relevant insurance policy.
Instead, our research found that 22% of people would turn to their family to bail them out, 21% would go to their bank for financial assistance, and a further 5% would take on debt to dig themselves out of a hole, mostly secured against their property. Perhaps of most concern are the 15% of women and 12% of men who have no idea what they would do if hit by a financial crisis.
Get Saving! continues to go down well across a wide range of media, illustrating the benefits of ‘taking financial control’ with the help of an IFA. Visit www.unbiased.co.uk/getsaving to find out more.
Mortgage IFAs and www.impartial.co.uk
To coincide with the Easter homebuying season, we revealed that 71% of potential first-time buyers are either completely unaware of other financial products they need to consider to accompany a mortgage, or would at least need advice.
But with additional research showing that, in practice, 78% of borrowers take out one or more insurance or investment products alongside their mortgage (1.4 products on average), we urged people to seek independent financial advice from a Mortgage IFA when buying their homes.
This latest initiative aims once again to emphasise to media and consumers the crucial differences between types of mortgage adviser, and why it’s not enough just to think about getting the best deal on your mortgage product when buying a home.
Visit our dedicated ‘Find a Mortgage IFA’ website at www.impartial.co.uk to find out more about our ongoing campaign.
This month’s topics
In the member survey detailed earlier in this Update, 39% of IFAs expressed interest in becoming involved with IFAP’s regional Press Clubs, which work with local media to promote local independent advice.
IFAP members who have not read about or experienced the benefits of belonging to a Press Club, should read our guide - “The essential guide to raising your IFA business' profile with local media” – download your free copy here.
News from around the country
Portsmouth: Following a lot of hard work by Press Club members in this area, a new monthly campaign kicked off in May with the first full page feature in The News. There is still an opportunity for one or two additional members to join this year’s campaign – contact james@ifap.org.uk.
Sussex: Details of a new campaign with The Argus are nearly finalised, with a targeted campaign launch in July. Interested members in the papers’ circulation areas should contact james@ifap.org.uk.
Dundee: The current campaign with The Courier will shortly come to the end, with the aim of agreeing a new one for autumn. The Courier has a strong high net worth audience, so do consider joining this small but progressive group.
Aberdeen: The Forum IFA Press Club continue to publish a lively and colourful page in The Press & Journal on a bi-monthly basis. In addition members have frequent opportunity to contribute to the papers editorial columns. The Club held their annual golf tournament in May, and aim to distribute surplus funds to local charities.
Liverpool & North Wales: Members in these area are reminded that this Liverpool based Club continues to publish a monthly feature in both the English and Welsh editions of The Daily Post. Club meetings are held quarterly and potential new members are welcome.
Leicester: This long-established club continues to publish a full page feature in The Mercury each month. Reader feedback confirms the popularity of the page and members indicate good recall from existing and new clients.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Following an excellent take up from IFAs in the area, this Club published its first page in The Journal in March and will continue with a full page feature each month.
All members are advised that a new series of articles suitable for newspaper use are now available from this page on our website.
For more information about any of the above please contact IFAP Regional Press Officer James Sharp on 01902 850053 or james@ifap.org.uk.
This month’s topics
IFAP is now approaching three quarters of the way through its current financial year, and year to date we’re in good form, with over 450,000 requests for local IFAs under our belt already. This puts us on target to fulfill more than 550,000 consumer and business requests by our financial year end.
Twelve months on from the biggest shake-up of the financial advice sector, I’m delighted to report that the market for independent financial advice remains stronger than ever and continues to grow. Which means we’ll have plenty of current and future activity to tell you about in our next electronic edition of Update.
David Elms
Chief Executive
IFA Promotion Ltd
david@ifap.org.uk
If you are authorised to amend your IFA details, please refer to the Update Newsletter email in your inbox, and click the “Check your IFA Details” box to review the information IFAP is currently displaying about your firm to enquiring consumers and businesses.
