Bosh, bish, the end of commish
Busy week this week. Now the FSA have only gone and published their latest Consultation Paper (CP) on the treatment of legacy assets as far as commission and adviser charging are concerned. The paper’s title is CP11/26 and it turns out to be rather important. First off, if you’re looking for it you can find […]
The right number of platforms to use
So this is something that came up in the sessions I did last week at the PFS conference (and a very good conference it was). How many platforms should an IFA practice use? My glib answer on the day was 2.8. The real answer though is only a little less glib. You should use the […]
Prix de l’ARC – Aegon hit the wrap market
So after writing up Cofunds‘ new charging structure a couple of months ago, I think I’d better do the same for the newest kids on the platform block, Aegon. Before I do, I think we should take a moment to congratulate Aegon on a) getting to market and b)being really open, upfront and transparent about […]
It’s D2C nite tonite!
Well, it’s been a busy few days in platformland. First of all there was a very interesting debate between Hugo Thorman of Ascentric/IFDL and David Ferguson of Nucleus on the importance or otherwise of owning your own technology. I was going to write a bit on that but ended up getting huffy about Active Member […]
Active Member Discounts – Oops! We Did It Again
I don’t do much writing on pensions these days, but before all the platforms stuff I was a corporate pensions dude and once you’ve been there, it never leaves you, sort of thing. So I was fascinated to see that the issue of Active Member Discounts (AMDs) on group pensions is rearing its head again. […]
How to win Platform Of The Year – Guaranteed!*
The platform industry’s annual beano has been and gone once again. And amongst the usual suspects and the ever-lengthening category names (hard to type when you’re tweeting the results, are you listening Clive?) there were a couple of real stand-out results for me. First, Scottish Widows took Best New Platform with mymoneyworks. As the judges […]
The fund supermarket Celebrity Deathmatch
Things are hotting up. Hot on the heels of CoFunds announcing that they were going to give fund managers a really sore Chinese burn if they didn’t launch ‘clean’ share classes, those wacky pranksters at Skandia came out in favour of the current 150bps (or whatever) class. The idea for them is that they can […]
A year in the life of the lang cat
Just a short post, and a touch self-indulgent (or more so than usual), if you’ll forgive. A year ago today I cut the cord with the mighty Standard Life, put my pass, phone, laptop and other bits and bobs in a locked drawer and went out the twirly doors for the last time. It’s been […]
Cofunds get their transparency on
So I had the pleasure of attending the Cofunds’ relaunch / refresh / briefing today, wherein Martin, Verona and the gang told us about their plans for unbundling and changing the Cofunds proposition over the next year or so. I’ve been looking forward to this announcement as I am a bit of a fan of […]
Apples and oranges
Last week I wrote nice things about Fidelity and their transparent disclosure of fund manager rebates. This week I find myself back wrestling opacity again, and it reminds me how difficult it is to perform meaningful comparisons between old and new world. To many people outside the platformerati (you’re welcome) with highly-evolved scepticism, platforms are […]
