So here we are again, on a trip round a big ball of flaming gas, in an increasingly desperate and inevitably futile search for meaning. No, I’m not describing Nigel Farage sucking up to Elon Musk, I mean it’s a whole new year!

You see what I did there? I did a set-up and then confounded your expectations before dragging you back to where you thought we were going in the first place. That’s a misdirection and a resolve, friends, and while the last digit on the calendar may have changed, this is the level of High Quality Writing you can continue to expect from the Update in 2025. I remember a glum Northerner telling me once that the Update wouldn’t last six months; he clearly reckoned without the fact that High Quality Writing like this expands to fit the audience available and for as long as people keep opening this drivel, I’ll keep writing it and let that be a lesson to you.

Anyway, as is customary I shun reviews of the year before in December, or predictions for the year ahead in January, both of which your good friend and mine Lars Ulrich might describe as – and I’m trying to pick my words carefully here – ‘a little stock’. If we’re honest not a huge amount is going on yet, but the Ever-Expanding Gut Of Content wants consistently fed and has no truck with the Constricting Waistband Of Moderation, so everyone is looking for a Big Thing to write about, forgetting along the way that Big Things aren’t always good or fun ways to start the year.

So let’s not. Instead let’s have something funny, a punt for the event next month, a link or two, some good music and then let’s get this week out the way and come back stronger next week when the fug has abated a bit. 

SOMETHING FUNNY 

So it turns out that the FCA, and a selection of other regulators, got a comedy missive from the upper echelons of the Government asking them to come up with ideas to kickstart a sluggish economy and encourage economic growth. By 16 January. I personally think this is a massive trolling exercise a bunch of Spads came up with when horsed on Baileys over the break, but let’s move past the fact it’s a clearly preposterous notion that a regulator would be able to deliver anything in two weeks and have a go ourselves. 

Here’s an idea. If you come to the event next month you’ll have an opportunity to support the Samaritans by Purchasing Very High Stylishness Lang Cat Socks, which fashion gurus predict will be the very most desirable way to clothe your dogs of 2025, much as our Hats were for your nappers in 2024. I will make a donation and send a pair of these fine Socks to the best suggestion of what the FCA could respond with, wrong answers only. I’ll go first… 

• Advisers are generally small businesses and as we all know they’re the engine room of the economy. It’s also economically desirable to reallocate capital from the more affluent – generally advisory clients – to somewhere where it will be injected into the economy, most likely on pizza ovens and Teslas. Therefore we should mandate a minimum ongoing adviser charge of 3% a year and an upfront of at least 10% to ensure that trickle-down works this time.  
• The velocity of transfers and associated sub-optimal outcomes still leaves a lot to be desired. Institute “Strip Transfers” where the CEO has to wear one less item of clothing each day a transfer drags on past a 7-day transfer window and do a TikTok dance outside their head office at 10am. Once they’re in the buff, we move on to the CFO and for extreme cases we go to the CTO, and no-one wants to see that. Transfers? Sorted mate. 

You get the idea.

A PUNT FOR THE EVENT NEXT MONTH 

It’s our big London event – Divide & Conquer – next month, February 6th at the still-fabulous Kings Place, just out the back of Kings Cross. You can find details here. Free for folk who work in adviser firms (if you work for a huge provider with an advice offshoot you only qualify if you’re in an advice-giving or paraplanning role). £100 plus the tax for everyone else. You know it makes sense.

We’ve got Sara Woodroffe from the FCA doing actually sensible stuff on the advice/guidance boundary, we’ve got a couple of Absolute Rucks planned, lots of planners sharing Big Things of the good variety, and more. There’s a cool session before lunch for those that want to hear our latest research findings and explore the themes with some good people, and then the agenda proper starts after lunch. There will be excellent food, plentiful drink, fine people. And Socks.

Please do come, it’ll be a fine way to see off January and get the year started properly. Again: tickets here. We’re not streaming this one, so if you want to see it then you will need to get your perfectly formed bahookie into the venue.

See you next week, don’t forget about the Socks. 

Mark