Greetings all, and welcome to the most pointless Update of the year. It’s Budget day and you all are deeply invested in checking whether already quite wealthy people will be made very slightly more or less wealthy as a result of what you hear in the next few hours. I for one can’t wait to hear your opinions on LinkedIn as to whether politicians live in the real world or not. If the rumours in the FT this morning are true it looks like we’ll be getting a screeching U-turn on changes to cash ISA allowances, which is great news if you’ve been working on systems changes since the last announcement.
As has become customary on Budget/Update days, there is no point at all in doing anything particularly serious, not that the Update is really the place for serious things. So I’m just going to punt our Advice Gap 2026 reports, and then we’ll see what happens.
Usually we publish one massive Advice Gap report, which is all good and has lots of stuff in it, and the feedback we normally get is “phew it’s a bit of a read, isn’t it?” to which our response is “yes, but it’s got lots of data and stuff in it that you like” and then it’s like “yeah but can’t it be shorter” to which we’re like “yeah but can’t YOU be shorter” and then it all sort of spirals from there.
While producing another data-rich, analysis-heavy 80 page PDF and ramming it down your expectant gullets is in fact our idea of a good time at the lang cat, we’ve decided this year to try something different, and so instead we’re publishing not one but six Advice Gap reports. And in fact it’s not six but seven (are we still doing the six-seven thing? My kids seem unsure). And so if you are particularly interested in one element or another then you can read the bit you like and ignore all the other stuff, because the way we get wiser and better informed and rounded as human beings is by ignoring everything that isn’t immediately relevant. Social media teaches us that.
The first six papers are nice and short and punchy and the seventh paper is where we take all the data and information we’ve shared in the first ones out from behind the woodshed, give them a good doing and see what sort of leaks out. We want to spend some time on working out what to do about the Advice Gap, rather than just diagnosing its existence.
But before we get to that one, I should point you at the good stuff that’s out already. We’ve published two of the six, three comes next week and the rest pretty much week on week throughout November. Here’s how it works:
- Sizing the advice gap – out already. In this we introduce everything and, er, size the advice gap.
- The AI Wildcard – out already. AI is now one of the biggest advisers in the UK, so it’s only right to take a look.
- To the barriers! (1) – coming next week. What’s stopping people getting advice?
- To the barriers! (2) – coming soon. What’s really, like really stopping firms giving advice to more people?
- Deep impacts – coming mid-November. Why does getting advice actually matter and what’s the impact on those who can’t get it?
- Enter the regulator – coming late November. No, this isn’t an instruction. What do we want regulators to do?
All of this and also all the previous Advice Gap reports are available on the dedicated AG website which is here. Thanks to our sponsor Saturn this year everything is as free as a commentard’s ability to spaff “LIEbour amirite?” below the line on literally everything.
For those genuinely interested in this stuff, the reports we produce are the only longitudinal data series on the Advice Gap; our report has its roots in the original Citizens Advice work from 2016 which we took over when they didn’t want to do it any more. It is, therefore, the OG. You may wish to nod approvingly while making the stank face.
So that’s that. I should probably give you something funny too, so here’s something that made me laugh this week. Worth $10 of anyone’s money.
And your music choice this week is a good one for these colder days. Yes, it’s Insomnium again but this time they’ve got their mates from Amorphis along which means there’s more folky and proggy bits with the heavy bits AND Tomi Joutsen is doing his thing AND the video’s got everyone pretending to play their instruments in a foggy field somewhere outside Rovaniemi, probably. All of this is Very Good and means that you should listen to The Hour Grows Late at your earliest convenience. If your convenience hasn’t been TAXED by then, amirite?
