THE TOP CLASS WEDNESDAY UPDATE IS IMMUNE TO CONSOLIDATION

Hello, hello, happy Wednesday, hope your Augusts are proceeding well and that The Corn Wall is all you wished it to be. I would very much doubt many of you were camping, which means you avoided getting a tents, nervous headache last week. I suspect that when travel properly opens up then the UK will […]
THE TOP CLASS WEDNESDAY UPDATE IS FLOCKING RESILIENT

The summer lull is upon us, then, and many of you will exhibit tried and true migratory patterns as you head for a magical place known only to the top socioeconomic decile of the population as The Corn Wall. Exactly what it is about the corn, or the wall, that leads so many urban-dwellers to […]
THE TOP CLASS WEDNESDAY UPDATE WILL ACCEPT A CHICKEN DINNER IF THAT’S ALL THERE IS

Before we begin, might I please beg of you to spend just a few minutes rating how your platforms have done in Q2 2021? It’s been a big quarter for a lot of them, and this forms at least part of the report card for many. Free summary playback for all respondents. You can find […]
THE TOP CLASS WEDNESDAY UPDATE STILL HASN’T GOT OVER IT

A brilliant tournament. A truly fantastic final taken all the way to extra time. And, after a day of incredible tension, the result we all wanted. Can it really be two years to the day since the Cricket World Cup final? Good times never seemed so good. Anyway, a lot has happened since the summer […]
THE TOP CLASS WEDNESDAY UPDATE COULD GO A-VIKING ANY TIME IT LIKED

So you might think that I’d start this week’s Update with some amusing whimsy about Polson as a surname and how it relates to Yussuf Poulsen, the second-string Danish striker; claim some Danish heritage and all that sort of thing. But I’m not going to, mainly because the frozen patronymic ‘Polson’ goes back at least […]
THE TOP CLASS WEDNESDAY UPDATE HAS ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD THE VALUE OF PROTECTION

Mr Polson is on holiday again and for the second time, I’m taking the TCWU reins amid a Twitter ruck. The Sunday Times’ Ali Hussain wrote an article about life insurance, followed it up with a couple of scathing tweets about the value of life insurance and financial advice and then all hell broke loose. […]
THE TOP CLASS WEDNESDAY UPDATE ISN’T EVEN REMOTELY SURPRISED

They say it’s the hope that kills you, but if you started out without any in the first place then you can just raise a weary eyebrow and carry on. It’s a bit like when Calvin is happier that he got a ‘C’ than an ‘A’ in his maths test, because if he keeps everyone’s […]
What’s important to advisers right now on platform selection

Our due diligence reg tech tool Platform Analyser has been going for a while now (16 months to be precise), and that means we’re compiling lots of lovely data that we can play with and interrogate. Among the insights we’re gleaning are the factors that are most important to advisers, planners and advice professionals when […]
THE TOP CLASS WEDNESDAY UPDATE IS 35 YARDS OUT

So there you are, not much to do really, edging forward towards the centre circle to see if you can get in shot and improve the value of your image rights, when all of a sudden bad things happen, you’re all tangled up in the net and you’re the subject of remorseless memes like this […]
THE TOP CLASS WEDNESDAY UPDATE CAN BOOGIE

It is a truth universally acknowledged that I know exactly nothing about foopball; it’s the wrong shaped ball for this particular egg-chaser. Being Scottish, this is normally not an issue when major tournaments roll around, but this year is different. First, we seem inexplicably to have made it through to whatever this stage of the […]