DataViz: A fresh look at financial services
If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then financial services has gone well and truly mad. Having joined the industry around two months ago, this has been my overwhelming impression of the tired-old lines and scary figures that the industry constantly churns out […]
Don’t believe the hype
I’m pretty sure Chuck D and Flavor Flav had other things on their mind beyond platform due diligence when they penned their 1988 classic, but hey, it’s a great record, and its central hook is certainly worth remembering at the moment. The platform world is changing. The Axa Elevate move broke earlier this week, and […]
And so it begins – Standard Life scarfs AXA Elevate
(I made edits to this at 7.30pm on 4/5/16 to update on the Architas deal, pricing reviews and the purchase price). Well, I was never going to be able to let this go by. I was on a plane as I wrote most of this; the news of Standard Life buying AXA Portfolio Services, which […]
PS16/12 and the mystery of the cover photos
Another week, another chunky missive from the FCA. Although happily, PS16/12: Pensions reforms, feedback on CP15/30 and final rules and guidance didn’t make me feel like turning green and smashing stuff. So that’s a good start. PS16/12 follows on from CP15/30: Pensions reform, proposed changes to our rules and guidance. It looked at whether consumers […]
Aviva and FNZ up a tree, R-E-PLAT-FORM-I-N-G
Just a quick few thoughts on the news from Aviva today that it plans to migrate its platform from Bravura to FNZ. For those not intimately involved, Bravura and FNZ, along with GBST (disclosure: GBST is a client of ours) are the three big beasts of outsourced platform technology in the advised space. IFDS is […]
Booting ISAs in the baws – tax year end 2015/16
Well now, the IA has just put out its stats for tax year end (TYE) 2015/16 and it’s not nice reading. The full release is here but this table which I nabbed from the release tells quite a story. 2014/15 was generally reckoned to be a relatively sucky year for the ISA season, which has […]
REMIND ME WHY WE’RE DOING THIS AGAIN?
There’s a theme running through the FCA’s Consultation Paper 16/12: Secondary Annuity Market proposed rules and guidance. If you’ve braved all 112 pages (or any of them really) you might have spotted it. Here are some clues! Paragraph 1.7, We believe that there is a significant risk of poor outcomes for consumers in the secondary […]
UFPLS NO MORE?
There’s a new endangered species to add to the ever growing list. Never mind your black rhinos or your Sumatran orangutans. No, the one we need to worry about is UFPLS. The ABI has called time on pensions jargon. It’s consulting on a new guide to pensions language which will clear away the confusing in […]
All change in platform land
After a quiet few months in platform land it feels like things are about to change, and potentially quite dramatically. There are a number of rumours doing the rounds, here, here and here, and these are just the ones that have been published. At lang cat HQ we do have a view as to how […]
EVERYTHING COMES TO THOSE WHO WAIT (KIND OF)
He likes to work a crowd does our Gideon. To be fair, it’s his big moment of the year. The key note speech. The one time people will generally sit and listen to him with only a modicum of heckling. But even at that he was outclassed and upstaged. Between Theresa May’s cleavage and the […]
