Confidence in the UK’s economic prospects has improved in the financial services profession over the last 12 months, a new Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI) survey has shown.

Respondents were asked to compare how they felt about the UK’s economic prospects now compared with six months ago.

The study revealed that, of the 743 respondents, 35% were less optimistic about the UK’s economic prospects, compared to 48% at the end 2016.

Of those surveyed by the CISI, 30% felt more optimistic, with 35% unchanged, as opposed to 32% optimistic and 20% unchanged end 2016.  

The CISI, provider of the CFP designation, undertook the survey from 4 November 2017 to 18 February 2018. The CISI has conducted the poll on average every six-12 months since Spring 2012.

The CISI has 45,000 members worldwide and is a professional body for those working in securities, investment, wealth management and Financial Planning. It has approximately 20,000 members in the UK with nearly 1,000 CFP professionals.
 
The professional body’s confidence indicator (sum of positives less sum of negatives) is -5 compared to -16 at the end of 2016.
 
Simon Culhane, Chartered FCSI and CISI chief executive, said: “Although we are still sub-zero at -5 in terms of sentiment, the financial services profession is showing a steady and improved growth in confidence in outlook for the UK economy, compared with the end of 2016.
 
“The result of our survey is in line with the latest forecast for the outlook for manufacturing for the year, with that sector expecting expansion by 2% according to the EEF manufacturers’ organisation.
 
“The confidence level in our survey peaked in Autumn 2013 at 54%. From my own conversations with UK financial services CEOs, I believe it is possible that our profession’s confidence levels in the UK’s economic outlook will become even more positive once we have moved beyond Brexit.”

Some of the comments from respondents to the survey underlined confidence in the future of the economy.

One wrote: “My experience of travelling a little around the country is that the UK is booming. I find the gloom and creation of uncertainty is a London Westminster/City bubble thing, where people not venturing outside of the M25 do not see the bigger UK picture and have their opinions dominated by London media perspectives. There is unnecessary pessimism, a feature that soon becomes “group think” meaning that economic commentators are afraid of not following the herd and having a positive outlook.”

While others remained more cautious, with another commenting: “As expected, the UK is suffering slightly from the political uncertainty and slight pull-back in real wage growth.”