So you’ll have had your April, then, and I have no idea how we’ve got this deep into 2025 this quickly. Like a fever dream of some kind. And speaking of fever, which is hot, please pray for your faithful Updater who is heading into what I believe is to be 30 degree heat in somewhere called That London not long after you read this (assuming you read it PROMPTLY) and I’m really not sure I’m going to survive. 

I am cheered by this news from the Graun, which usually just causes trouble but is sometimes useful. I think all Celts are probably in danger of sudden cardiac arrest in these temperatures, so if you see me around please send champagne. I’m also cheered by the fact that the reason I’m reiving South is to have Adventures, mainly involving exhibiting Analyser at the PA360 conference, and the new platform switch functionality in particular. If you’re at the conference come and find me and we can discuss that, and also Socks.  

Speaking of conferences, we’ve done the Judging for Catwalk, and are in the process of informing the Final Five, who will then be required to Submit to our Inquisitors in front of – hopefully – you. We’ll publish their names very soon, but if you want to see some really interesting early-stage companies doing their thing, plus getting fed and watered like it’s going out of fashion, then this is where you need to go. Tickets aren’t free but they’re not far off and I know how much you lot earn. 5 June, Clerkenwell, That London. Get on it.  

To business, then, and we can’t let this week pass without talking about True Potential’s Section 166 and potential redress for failures in transferring assets in to their vertically integrated world without advice.  

TP polarises people like few other providers except maybe the one with three initials. The relative merits of its multi-asset funds, its client app, its platform, its CRM and all the other stuff it does is a subject worthy of discussion, but not this week.  

Instead, and remembering last week’s Update, I’d like to offer two quick thoughts. 

The first is that the old adage of ‘if it looks too good to be true, it probably is’ is as true in our sector as anywhere else. TP’s massive growth, fuelled very clearly by the famous instant-pay 8% offer for advisers who handed clients over to the direct offer team and then walked away, was always going to find itself short of a chair when the music eventually stopped.  

But let’s move past who’s involved and concentrate on the more substantive issue: what this highlights for bulk transfers, consolidation, platform switching and anything else that involves moving lots of advised clients from one place to another.  

I was taught early that if you work in an advised environment, a quick way to check if someone is walking a dangerous path is to look at how much direct offer business they’re doing. DO is easier administratively of course, and it doesn’t come with the liability tail that most readers of this (but not all – check the music choice) will be very used to.  

But it also inevitably relies on the asymmetry of information that’s inherent in our little corner of the world; with the best will in the world there’s no way most retail clients can understand the relative merits of transferring or not, even if there’s a nice young person on the phone to answer their questions without straying into advice. Eventually most transfers for most people – not all, I know some folk are perfectly fine with it – need someone trained to say “yep, you should do this”. Anything else has an awful feel of putting expediency before client outcomes, and that doesn’t sound very Consumer Dutery to me.  

So for those bigger transfer exercises which need to happen much more often if the consolidator market is ever to be more than a massive bag of bones, we need to either find a way to radically reshape direct offer disclosure without stepping into advice, or put on our brave pants and just give the damn advice. 

And if it’s the pants option then there are surely ways to do this without it being as big an industry in its own right as it appears just now. For most accumulation clients it’s a relative cost and investment suitability exercise, and these are both things the machines can help with. It takes some work at a book level, and an understanding that transfers aren’t right for everyone, incentivised by high multiples or not, but in 2025 there is no good reason why the prep work should take longer than a few minutes per case if your data is in good shape. And if it isn’t you’ve got bigger issues. 

Anyway, an awful lot of business cases in this market are predicated on the wholesale safe movement of assets from Venue A to Venue B. Anyone involved in that in any capacity – including any of you who are thinking of selling your businesses or client banks – should watch the results of TP’s current issues very carefully. There’s a way through this, but mass direct offer as the path of least resistance isn’t it.  

Your music choice was foreshadowed last week; I let you all off then but this time not so much. This is dedicated to the youngest reader of the Update who isn’t all that interested in finance and what her mum does for a living, but is really, really into Ghost. So this is for you, Hayden, enjoy Peacefield and never, ever compromise. In case you’re wondering WTF is with this video, it’s a perfect homage to every MTV metal video in the 80s and I couldn’t love it more.