We used the interactive polling tool Sli.do to survey our audience in real time at the #AISummit last Thursday, and I thought I would share some of the most interesting results with you:

56% of our audience are “Very Confident” recommending alternative investments to their clients.  This might be a reflection of our audience, who are already engaged in alternatives, but it still leaves 44% who feel that they could know more.

When we asked What are the biggest PRACTICAL barriers to recommending alternative investments, we got a very mixed response:

• 40% of the audience said that is was concern about the FCA/FOS view
• 30% said it was the amount of research and due diligence required
• 30% said it was getting the right training and education
• 20% said it was producing suitability reports and client files
• 10% said it was lack of PI cover

With such an even spread of results, what I suspect is that ALL of these issues are a concern for advisers to some extent.

67% of advisers said that regulation DID NOT prevent them from recommending alternative investments to clients who would benefit from them, which is encouraging, although it still suggests that 33% of advisers have clients who are missing out.

Finally, we asked if ALL clients should have an allocation to alternatives. 55% of the audience said yes, 45% said no…

Note – this was a straw poll. The audience was not obliged to participate, so some polls had more respondents than others.

The full poll results can be viewed here