Product Innovation and the Impact on Advisors 2007

Financial Advisors’ Views of Product Innovation uses information from Datamonitor’s quarterly survey of financial advisors to assess their views of newly launched financial products, it examines what products appeal to them and which providers they most commonly use. The report presents the views of over 100 randomly selected IFAs.

Of the surveyed IFAs, the majority of their business was conducted in pensions and life-based investment products, while a large proportion of advisors claimed that mortgage products accounted for no part of their business. The majority of surveyed financial advisors stated that they prefer variable annuities over traditional annuities for producing income, while they also said that they significantly favour income drawdown for income generation over variable annuities. The majority of financial advisors offer their customers offshore bond investments, while the most commonly used providers for this investments include Skandia, Standard Life and Norwich Union. Most advisors use offshore bonds for investment and inheritance tax planning.