I did something the other week I have not done for years – I cut out a coupon in a national newspaper for a regular savings scheme.
I must admit the excitement of a decade or so ago coming home and finding another new investment trust or unit trust brochure is long gone, so this was very much opportunist coupon cutting.
Anyway, the brochure and forms duly arrived a week or so later, and I promptly started filling out the application forms with the idea of doing the £50-a-month savings scheme.
And then it hit: I had to fill in all the nonsense that falls within the remit of Know Your Customer. In this case, it was going to require me copying my passport and getting it witnessed by someone professional.
It was for the Caledonia investment trust, and I only did it because I have been thinking for years about doing one and I chanced across its advert in one of the Sunday newspapers.
Now, unless I could find a friendly accountant or solicitor to do it for me for free, it was probably going to cost me – £50 was the cheapest I got quoted, or I could ask a neighbour who might qualify as a professional.
The only one I could think of is, frankly, a bit nosey – do I really want to explain to him what I am doing and what I like about the Caledonia trust?
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t, so I just threw the application form away.
Now, that is a shame because the trust is an excellent one – just my idea of why investment trusts are so good for long-term saving. They plod away making long-term investment decisions and in the case of Caledonia has an excellent dividend policy.
I should declare an interest because Caledonia used to be a shareholder in the company that owns Investment Week.
Now I understand there have to be money-laundering rules, but surely when they get in the way of a private individual making a very modest investment, surely things are going a little wrong?
Recently, when invited to a nephew’s christening, rather than give him the usual tat of a bit of Winnie the Pooh china or a piece of naff silver, it would have been much more useful to put a lump sum somewhere for him, and then I wouldn’t have to bother about his birthday for the next 21 years.
Of course, you run into the same problems and thankfully his parents have opened a Child Trust Fund for him so I could just top that up, but the choice of CTF providers is not great.
I perfectly understand why the Government is knocking CTFs on the head for newborns from next April, but surely the industry could create a replacement the taxpayer doesn’t have to fund to meet the same need?
A simple plea to the new Government: Can you just make it simpler for folk like me – and most of the rest of the population – to take out simple products, and then advisers can look after the difficult bits?
Lawrence Gosling is the founding editor of Investment Week. His views are his own, any comments to him at lawrencegosling@sky.com
