The worst of all worlds
You couldn’t make it up. I’m yet to meet anyone who thinks unit rebates are a good idea. That’s not quite true. I know one provider who likes them, mainly because they have the functionality in place to deal with them and they reckon there’s a competitive advantage there (that may not be how they’d […]
Clean is the new dirty
Hello and welcome to the first lang cat blog of 2013. At least the first blog on this site, I,ve been doing some posting over on Adviser Lounge, which is worth a visit if you haven,t already. So the hot issue at the moment, now that RDR is here, is fund rebates and their wily […]
Slainte mhath from the lang cat
Well, that’s been quite a year. As I look around me I see an industry full of completely done-in, knackered, farmutshet folks. Don’t know why, it’s not like anything big’s happening at the end of 2012… …Ho, ho. As I write, it looks like pretty much all the providers have just about got most of […]
The lang cat’s 10 best albums of 2012
When we’re not banging on about retail and corporate platforms, pensions, transparency and all that good stuff, we’re usually banging on about music. Here’s a list of our favourite 10 albums that have powered us through, got us inspired and kept us writing in 2012. What were yours? Kreator – Phantom Antichrist – tremendous battle […]
BAM! BIFF! POW! Take that, haters – AXA Elevate slashes its charges
Well, this is just tremendously inconvenient. After putting out a blog on Zurich last week and a big update to subscribers to the lang cat Guide to Platform Pricing, AXA’s only gone and made a pricing change to its Elevate platform. I really wish these people would check with me first. Don’t they know who […]
Caught in a ZIP – first look & pricing analysis at Zurich Wrap
So at the Scottish IFP conference yesterday (which was excellent) I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at Zurich’s new retail platform (the Zurich Intermediary Platform or ZIP – I’m not kidding, you can imagine the forthcoming ad campaign) and a run-down of its pricing. To be fair, anyone who went up to […]
My life as a pie chart
So I came across this article today, called Retiring The Portfolio Screenshot. I opened it thinking it was something about what clients see about their investments on wrap platforms. But it isn’t. It’s about creative types doing better demos of the work they’ve done for clients. So, you know, whatever and good luck to them […]
Just write the cheque already
Well, that’s been fun. The last 24 hours or so have seen a flurry of to-ing and fro-ing as a result of a Dear Compliance Officer letter from the FSA that landed on desks yesterday.It’s all to do with adviser charging and making sure platforms / providers can be really sure that clients have stuck […]
A warm(ish) gonzo welcome to auto enrolment
Well, we made it. Today is 1 October 2012 and the culmination of years of effort on the parts of many. From the talk of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ compulsion (a full 10 years before Fifty Shades of Grey) to the realisation that this was unstoppable; from the furore over NEST charges to the as-yet unproven […]
Turning up for dessert – AJ Bell joins the unbundled dinner party
OK, so we have a new toy to play with. The toy is AJ Bell’s new Sippcentre pricing structure, and (colours to the mast), it’s a good’un. AJ Bell is the last of the big guys to the transparency table, so their structure will generate considerable interest. It does need a little unpacking though, so […]
