SUPERCLEAN – sorts stubborn semi-bundled stains!
So things move on apace in the clean share class / rebate war, and the industry continues to eat its young with gay abandon. The latest development to shine in is from everyone’s favourite consumer champion, Standard Life, who today announced it’s going to launch a whizzo range of SUPERCLEANÂ funds onto SL Wrap. SUPERCLEANÂ funds are […]
The difficult second album
A brief, extra-self-indulgent post today. If you want to skip this one, go ahead. I won’t hold it against you. So today is the last trading day of the lang catâ??s 2nd full year. the lang cat has had a pretty amazing year, doing close on twice the amount of business I thought it would. […]
Rebates, tax and falafels
So in a move which surprised pretty much no-one, HMRC today ruled that rebates, whether in cash or in units, will be taxable. What fewer folk were expecting was that this will take effect from 6 April this year. This only applies to monies held outside an ISA or pension (thanks!) and isn’t retrospective (big […]
The tedium of going o’er
The news yesterday that Aviva has stopped its workplace savings platform programme (read the story here and here) is interesting in lots of ways. Now, before the yellow and blue dudes reading this start reaching for the batphone to the legal heavies, I should mention that I’ve worked on the Aviva workplace savings programme on […]
The worst of all worlds
You couldn’t make it up. I’m yet to meet anyone who thinks unit rebates are a good idea. That’s not quite true. I know one provider who likes them, mainly because they have the functionality in place to deal with them and they reckon there’s a competitive advantage there (that may not be how they’d […]
Clean is the new dirty
Hello and welcome to the first lang cat blog of 2013. At least the first blog on this site, I,ve been doing some posting over on Adviser Lounge, which is worth a visit if you haven,t already. So the hot issue at the moment, now that RDR is here, is fund rebates and their wily […]
Slainte mhath from the lang cat
Well, that’s been quite a year. As I look around me I see an industry full of completely done-in, knackered, farmutshet folks. Don’t know why, it’s not like anything big’s happening at the end of 2012… …Ho, ho. As I write, it looks like pretty much all the providers have just about got most of […]
The lang cat’s 10 best albums of 2012
When we’re not banging on about retail and corporate platforms, pensions, transparency and all that good stuff, we’re usually banging on about music. Here’s a list of our favourite 10 albums that have powered us through, got us inspired and kept us writing in 2012. What were yours? Kreator – Phantom Antichrist – tremendous battle […]
BAM! BIFF! POW! Take that, haters – AXA Elevate slashes its charges
Well, this is just tremendously inconvenient. After putting out a blog on Zurich last week and a big update to subscribers to the lang cat Guide to Platform Pricing, AXA’s only gone and made a pricing change to its Elevate platform. I really wish these people would check with me first. Don’t they know who […]
Caught in a ZIP – first look & pricing analysis at Zurich Wrap
So at the Scottish IFP conference yesterday (which was excellent) I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at Zurich’s new retail platform (the Zurich Intermediary Platform or ZIP – I’m not kidding, you can imagine the forthcoming ad campaign) and a run-down of its pricing. To be fair, anyone who went up to […]
