The BSA welcomes the opportunity to respond to this consultation, which gives a use case of consumers with significant savings held in cash, and some risk appetite, to consider investing. If Targeted Support is effectively designed and delivered, it could be interesting to many building societies as it would enable them to refer individual members who have high levels of savings to partners if investment might be in those members’ interests. 
 

Some building societies already work with advisers and intermediaries to offer financial advice, and a small number have or had their own financial advice subsidiary. The appetite to partner with intermediaries could increase with Targeted Support if it opens up a simple, low risk option so that more societies can offer a wider range of savings and investment options to their members. For that to happen, questions around potential liability and retrospective action/application by the Financial Ombudsman Service (“FOS”) would need to be clarified, as described in  our response to the Questions.

Read the full response