Pensions: we’ve got your best interests at heart

Harrumph! That’s the sound from the pensions industry and a good part of the advice profession in respect of the idea that pension savers might take their pots and run. And harrumphing turned to apoplexy the other day when some upstarts from a firm called Wise Pensions noised things up with talk of a pensions […]

Guest blog from Rob Bray

Rob Bray is a Wealth Architect, which is probably some kind of a financial planner or something, with Imperious Capital. He’s also a loose cannon and a great writer, all of which makes him someone we’re chuffed to have doing a guest blog on the site. Rob sent me this note after reading The Value […]

Orchestrated Maneouvres in the Wealth

Yeah, sorry about that. So it’s been a while since I wrote here, which is daft, but no-one said I was smart. Anyway, I wanted to rekindle the blog a bit, so you’ll have to put up with it, unless you stop reading here, when you won’t. So that’s all good. Skandia Old Mutual Wealth […]

Graham Greene gets insured fund economics

The first blog from me for a very, very long time. Once you get out the habit of this stuff it’s hard to get back into it. Never mind, here we are now. I know how you’ve all missed it, so much so that you’ve barely felt able to articulate how keenly you feel its […]

Tightening the ZIP – Zurich makes a move

It’s been, ooh, I dunno, weeks or something since a platform mucked around with its charging structure. So it’s with a sense of relief that we heard from our friends at Zurich last week that the Zurich Intermediary Platform – the only platform whose acronym is named after a clothes fastening – has stepped up […]

Mark’s Big Self-Congratulatory Blog

Bollocks to self-effacing stuff today. Every so often, bits of validation of what you’re doing happen, and this is one of those days. Last summer, we were putting our annual Guide to Platform Pricing together. It was a bit of a landmark one for us, because for the first time it wasn’t just me, late […]

Let the tweaking commence

See, they all bang on about ‘it’s not price, it’s value?‘ and all that kind of thing, and then the tweaking starts. The latest tweak isn’t from a platform; it’s from a DFM. Brooks Mac, a highly respectable and well-supported DFM is cutting the charge for its model portfolios from an average of 60bps inc […]

Time flies

The brain is a weird thing; it sometimes gets you to care about things you shouldn’t. We launch our new website today, hope you like it and all that, and it’s obviously all very exciting for us. Less so for you. Three and a half years ago or so, when setting up the lang cat, […]

Woodford: The Fees – Part The Second

(apologies for nicking Mark L’s headline. Maniac dictator’s privilege) So as you read this, there will be excitement, feigned or otherwise, about who is or isn’t getting Mr Woodford’s Famous Enormous ‘SUPERCLEAN’ Discount. It’s certain now that our favourite Bristolians with the big direct marketing bill get the Z class at 0.65% with a taxable 5bps […]

Free pension with every purchase! Cofunds sharpens its pencil.

Just a short post to confirm that as of today Cofunds has removed the establishment (setup) and annual charge on its Suffolk Life-provided Cofunds Pension Account (CPA). This is a welcome development. For a long time I’ve been banging on about ‘mid-market’ (sorry) platforms cutting off their noses to spite their faces with differential pension […]

Impact of poor service

/ White papers

The Impact of Poor Service

We provided the research for a report, in conjunction with Parmenion, which reveals how far short of expectations many adviser platforms are falling. The research found that over the last 12 months, 88% of advisers needed to apologise to at least one of their clients on behalf of a platform, and that poor service delivery from platforms impacts 91% of advisers every day.

Impact of poor service

/ White papers

The Impact of Poor Platform Service

We provided the research for a report, in conjunction with Parmenion, which reveals how far short of expectations many adviser platforms are falling. The research found that over the last 12 months, 88% of advisers needed to apologise to at least one of their clients on behalf of a platform, and that poor service delivery from platforms impacts 91% of advisers every day.

/ White papers

Answering the Call

Service means a lot of things to a lot of different people. It’s so subjective it can be hard to put your finger on. This paper aims to challenge the status quo and inertia that’s built up in the sector for many years.