An exhibition sponsored by UK online life insurer, Beagle Street, is portraying independent financial advisers (IFAs) as ‘dinosaurs’ facing extinction.
The exhibition, which is at the Dinosaur Museum on Britain’s Jurassic coast in Dorset, follows research – involving 5,000 UK adults in September 2014 – which revealed that 63% of UK adults do not trust IFAs and 84% believe that the ‘middlemen’ are an unnecessary point in the financial services process.
Nearly half of Britons, (46%) think IFAs over-complicate the industry and 48% claim that they would be more likely to buy life insurance if the process was made simpler and could be done online, according to the research.
Matthew Gledhill, managing director of Beagle Street, said: ""It cannot be right that a financial service has become so complicated that over the last twenty years a separate industry of advisers has grown up just to explain it."
He added: "There has been a chronic lack of innovation in the life insurance market, which we believe under-serves its customers."
