It’s all getting real – Hargreaves puts its vest(ing) on
I’ve always liked those moments when big, abstract concepts become real and commercial. A-Day was like that – it was fun debating what was going to happen, but much more fun when you started to see how providers, advisers and clients were going to relate to it in real life. An important step towards this […]
THE LANG CAT WILL SOON NEED A BIGGER BASKET
Worldwide press release. 9 February 2015. The lang cat, (probably) Leith’s leading independent platform, pensions and investment consultancy is delighted “no, scrub that” tumescent to announce three new additions of financial services misfits to its burgeoning ranks. Terry Huddart will join the lang cat Market Intelligentsia team on 16 March. He will be tasked with […]
Life is harder now (in investment outsourcing, anyway)
Earlier this week the lang cat and CWC Research launched Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width, a new, in-depth study of the outsourced centralised investment proposition (CIP) marketplace. The report is made up of qualitative adviser and industry interviews by CWC Research, alongside quantitative analysis by the lang cat of a range of discretionary […]
Nothing to do with buses
Hello again. You know what they say; platform pricing changes are like buses. You wait ages for one to come along and then! Actually, no-one says that. It’s a rubbish analogy. And the buses around here are pretty good. Anyway. Yes, only a week ago we were digesting the pricing changes made by Ascentric, and […]
Cards on the table: Ascentric goes all-in
It’s been ages since I’ve blogged, mainly as it’s been a while since a provider made a big pricing shift. Most of the activity on that front in recent times has understandably focused on changes to SIPP and drawdown fees following the budget. Quite a number have trimmed charges, with some removing them altogether. Which […]
The freedom to get screwed
We measure out our lives by different things. J Alfred Prufrock measured his out by coffee spoons. For many of us our lives are marked out by Christmases, Hogmanays, birthdays and anniversaries. But in financial services, our lives are marked out by two things: politicians dicking around with pensions, and mis-selling scandals. This being an […]
The lang cat’s albums of 2014
Another year passes, another trip around the sun, another year closer to our eternal reward, another blog about music that no-one will read. Time, as you know, is an artificial construct designed to explain the otherwise random passing of events, and an attempt to place order on a pointless and terrifying universe. 365 days is […]
MAKING A DRAMA OUT OF A CRISIS
Those ‘OMG’ I’m going to get fired! moments in the life of a PR are actually quite rare. Thankfully. But they are moments that stay with you for ever. My biggest OMG moment came on 17 January 2008 when a relative non-story (I would say that, wouldn’t I?) around the temporary closure of a property […]
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 […]
Innovation or indecision. We decide.
Reading the FCA’s Project Innovate feedback statement over a cup of tea this morning triggered some lively debate at lang cat port authority about life, the universe and how financial services has changed (or not, depending on your point of view) in the past couple of decades. We were quite excited to see Amazon, along […]
