Happyish New Year – ATS hikes its charges
Well, here we are on the last day of 2013 and I’m writing about platform pricing. Plus ca change, and all that. Our subject today – and I’ll be brief – is Alliance Trust Savings (disclosure: ATS is a client of the lang cat), which has hiked its price for both advised and direct customers. […]
PS13/1 – calling all advisers
It’s been a week since we launched our first ever white/yellow and grey paper, It’s all about you: Tackling your PS13/1 due diligence requirements’ and it’s fair to say that we’ve been bowled over by the response. There’s been a lot of tweeting and some press activity which is great but the thing that really […]
It’s all about you…and PS13/1
Mention a song title and a tune or lyrics will instantly spring to your mind. For you, it’s the most natural thing in the world. But perception differs. The song I think of might be quite different to the one you think of. Such is the nature of consciousness. You can’t fight it. The lang […]
Mr Blonde and the art of platform pricing Cofunds wields the razor
As a business which analyses platform pricing, amongst other things, we do have a rich and varied life, we spend a fair bit of time pressuring platforms who have not adequately described what it is they do and why it’s worth what they charge. It’s those platforms which feel the greatest price pressure and which […]
Bangs and whimpers – the SUPERCLEAN starting gun is fired
Those who know me will be surprised by the following statement: I feel a bit sorry for Standard Life today. OK, as you were. This blog isn’t really about SL. It’s about SUPERCLEAN and it just so happens that SL is first to the party. The Edinburgh titan’s superclean announcement has generated a resounding ‘meh’ […]
TR13/5, with advertising
Last week, the FCA published TR13/5, positioning it as an early report card on how advisers are doing with their implementation of RDR. Accompanied by some challenging research from NMG on how consumers are responding so far to Adviser Charging and Scope of Service disclosure, TR13/5 particularly piqued ourÃÂ curiosity at lang cat HQ. Why? […]
The rich get richer, the poor get the picture – Nucleus does its bit
There have been few things I’ve enjoyed more since joining the lang cat than buffing up our patented Recursive Pricing Engine (with integrated Turing Guessing Module). But it’s been a little quiet on the pricing front, so when I heard that Nucleus had trimmed its charges, I positively sprinted into work[1] to get my claws […]
Impressions of a noob
At the tail end of last week Mark challenged me to write a brief blog summing up what I’ve found out in my first week at the lang cat. Let’s call it 4 and a half days taking into account the robust induction process.[1] Now, my 10 year sentence in the industry thus far has […]
GAME OVER. No credits remaining. This platform paper bites.
OK, no funny stuff this time, straight to it. PS13/1 is the logical extension of the RDR, and the paper which, in the main, kills off the model that built something like 60-70% of the assets under administration in the UK platform market and nearly all the D2C market. All that bundled supermarket business is […]
Rebates, tax and falafels
So in a move which surprised pretty much no-one, HMRC today ruled that rebates, whether in cash or in units, will be taxable. What fewer folk were expecting was that this will take effect from 6 April this year. This only applies to monies held outside an ISA or pension (thanks!) and isn’t retrospective (big […]
