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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
FCA Guidance Consultation (GC14/3)
In an effort to avoid offending fans of any other literary greats (and quite possibly the FCA), I’ll keep to the point this time. I’ll even resist the urge to draw one last parallel between Jane Austen’s Emma (which while often considered Austen’s most accomplished work, is distinguished by the fact that nothing of note […]
Miss Woodhouse demands (more accessible and useful disclosure documents)
In Jane Austen’s Emma, during the rather bad-tempered picnic to Box Hill, mischief-making Frank Churchill addresses the assembled party. He asserts that Miss Emma Woodhouse wishes to be entertained and so demands from each of them ‘one thing very clever! or two things moderately clever; or three things very dull indeed.’ Mr Frank Churchill’s highly […]
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 […]
Transferring from Stocks and Shares to Cash
The not-so-NISA sting in the tail On the 1st of July, the whole world will tilt on its axis as swathes of Great British investors rush to top up their ISA allowance to a whopping £15,000. People are positively giddy with excitement at the freedom allowed them by Chancellor Osborne’s sweeping budget reforms. Not only […]
A mini-series on charges
Mark Polson has been talking to Emma Wall at Morningstar on fund fees and the pension charge cap. As part of Morningstar’s ongoing ‘ask the expert’ video series. Your browser does not support HTML5 video. What are fund fees? What does the pension charge cap mean for you?
