Speaking frankly – almost all fund managers, platform providers and financial product producers dislike the service element of the businesses they run.

They dislike it because it’s expensive, it’s hard to measure and they know unless they do it well then the flow of funds into their products could simply dry up, because no matter how good a product is, unless you get the service elements at least partly right – the financial planners that have to face the brunt of poor service will simply abandon you.

They dislike it too because it relies on processes and people, and people are expensive and variable. In short they see service as a cost to the business.

Asking questions about service too seems to be a sign for every IFA (and there are a lot of them) to vent their frustration about the perceived lack of interest in service displayed by every fund manager.

Last week brandmanagement’s UK subsidiary research business, CoreData Research announced its results of research commissioned by the Financial Time’s Pensions Management publication to assess adviser perceptions of service levels across the industry.

The study involved more than 900 financial planners who were asked to rate UK based financial services businesses for a raft of product areas, including; Wraps, SASS’s, SIPPS, Personal Pensions, Group Personal Pensions, Income Drawdown, IFA Portals and Annuities.

At the associated Technology and Administration Service (TAS) Awards awards in the heart of London on Wednesday night it was announced that Standard Life was the best all round performer in the UK financial services industry according to British planners.

UK IFA’s also voted Norwich Union the best in Personal Pensions, Friends Provident the best in Group Personal Pensions, Standard Life as the best in SIPPS and Income Drawdown products, Skandia the best in Wraps, Rowanmoor the best in SASS’s and finally the best IFA Portal was Exchange.

The other interesting element of the research was IFA’s saw the process as a chance to vent their spleen about which groups were performing poorly in the area of service – subsequently there were at least as many individual votes for the worst performers as there were for the best performers.

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