Is Your Town Top or Bottom for Financial Advice

Is Your Town Top or Bottom for Financial Advice.

Research by IFA trade body, Unbiased.co.uk, has found that Truro is the number one place in the UK where people seek financial advice per head.

The yearly league table based upon Unbiased’s search results found that nearly 10% of the population, based upon Office for National Statistics population data, has searched for a financial adviser in the last year.

Bottom of the pile were South West London, Walsall and Wigan postcodes.

Karen Barrett, Chief Executive of unbiased.co.uk, comments: “Our financial advice hotspots map reveals which areas in the UK have the highest percentage of people searching for a financial adviser in the UK – and Truro tops the list for the second year in a row, showing that people in the South West continue to be more engaged with their finances than the rest of the UK.

Top ten postcode searches for financial advice (by % population):

Postcode

1. Truro (TR)
2. Stevenage (SG)
3. Salisbury (SP)
4. Kilmarnock (KA)
5. Bath (BA)
6. Cambridge (CB)
7. Shrewsbury (SY)
8. Crewe (CW)
9. Motherwell (ML)
10. Dorchester (DT)
11. Exeter (EX)

Bottom ten postcode searches for financial advice (by % of population):

Postcode

1. Liverpool (L)
2. Sunderland (SR)
3. Durham (DH)
4. Blackpool (FY)
5. Sheffield (S)
6. Dumfries & Galloway (DG)
7. Ipswich (IP)
8. London (WC, EC, SE, SW, NW, N, E, W)
9. Walsall (WS)
10. Wigan (WN)

Comment

There are two sides to this: Cornwall is a sparsely populated area with virtually all areas having a TR postcode.  As such, many people outside Truro will be searching for a financial advice even if they are 15 miles away, say in Newquay or Perranporth.

In London, you only have to drive a mile down the road to be move from an SW7 postcode to a KT postcode (Kingston) or a TW postcode (Richmond and Twickenham).

The huge population of London, may also indicate high concentrations of financial adviser firms with a high profile, again meaning that perhaps people on London are already engaged with their money and deal regularly with a financial adviser.  In addition, London has a significant proportion of foreign nationals living there negating the need for financial advice, if they are not permanent residents.

The bottom two, Wigan and Walsall, we are not sure of, is it they are poorer regions, is it the press coverage for unbiased or the use of the internet is lower.

Is it us?  Tongue in cheek now, our head office is in a WS postcode area and we have offices in South West London.  Perhaps we need to move our Head Office to Cornwall.

Unbiased’s research also found that only 26% of over 55’s sought advice about pensions as they approach retirement, and nearly a fifth of those who did not, regretted not having done so.  The two biggest decisions that most of us make in life are a mortgage for property purchase and an even bigger one is at retirement.  Retirement is a decision that affects that rest of your life, contact us for advice.