How the lang cat got its name
They say you should never meet your heroes, but when you get the chance to wander up to a slightly ginger Fifer in a red cap who wrote the song after which your company is named, you should probably do that. And that’s what I did on Wednesday night of this week when I went […]
Are you being served?
On the way up from London the other day, I was flicking through the in-flight magazine and there was a feature on a British based luxury phone maker. In the feature, the CEO was talking about his business being completely customer focused. He says his business is driven by his customer’s needs and desires. It’s […]
Cut-price fruit, Russian oligarchs and Gary Coleman
A wee roundup of some of the recent moves in direct platform pricing land. Pretty much everyone is in now bar one or two of the white labels who are working out what to do in the Land of Glorious Transparency which is what we are living in and all that. First up, Chelsea went […]
What’s both super and clean? SUPERCLEAN!
Just a short ‘un on HL’s new shiny Wealth 150+. You can read all about it all over the place so we won’t do a big list of all the funds here. But a couple of interesting things have popped up. First, naturally, a few folk have been looking for dodgy wheezes – us included […]
The duck test
Ducks are straightforward creatures and there is very little confusion or debate involved in whether or not you have seen one. Such is this clarity of recognition that ducks have become a benchmark in establishing confidence in the identification of other items. What may not be so familiar (for the moment at least) is the […]
Pension transparency FTW
Nothing to do with platforms for a change… We were heartened – heartened I say – by the news today that investment providers to pension schemes will be forced to disclose all charges; not just the highly dubious headline Annual Management Charge (AMC). For those unaware, investment funds incur a load of costs over and […]
No victims, only participants in this price war
I’ve been banging on a bit on twitter recently about not being in favour of the Great Direct Platform Price War. However, thinking more about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that the actual price war is fine. It’s the narrative in the media that is the problem. For me, a narrow focus on price […]
Strawberry, Clubfinance and Close Bros to the diary room
Nothing stands still for long in the platform market, and if you’ve read our ramblings here and in the national meejah then you’ll remember that we said we thought there would be some changes from the published charge sheet. We’ve seen HL do a reverse ferret on the investment trust thing, and we’re also playing […]
Exit fees and why platforms shouldn’t be like mobile phones
Just a very quick blog as I haven’t posted in the last week; been out and about touring, talking about auto-enrolment rather than platforms. Just for giggles. To mix it up. What a rock’n’roll life I lead, etc. Anyway, we jack-in-the-boxed in the Telegraph as part of a story on exit fees on platforms; something […]
A guest blog from Ivan Opinion
Hello. We’ve been really chuffed with the interaction we’ve had on the blog since starting to cover Hargreaves Lansdown and the other direct platforms. So we asked a couple of our more prolific commenters if they’d be willing to write some stuff for us – and we’re delighted to say that Ivan Opinion (and yes, […]
