Hargreaves: RDR will be 'bad for entire industry'

Peter Hargreaves, the outgoing chief executive of Hargreaves Lansdown, believes smaller investors will struggle to get advice post-RDR.

He hopes this will benefit the group's fast-growing Vantage platform, which has already added 48,000 users in the past six months, bringing its total to 330,000. However, he remains pessimistic about other aspects of the RDR: "The RDR is likely to be bad for the entire retail investment industry. Everyone will have to tighten their belts. That said, we believe the Vantage model will not offend RDR sensibilities." To date, he believes that the growth in the Vantage platform has been driven by investors moving money from low-paying deposit accounts. He says: "They have realised that the...