Next please – Fidelity joins the new world
So yesterday Fidelity showed the best of British pluck and joined the huddled masses of direct platforms in our Tables Of Repentance – obviously the only reason a provider declares its new pricing is to get a spot therein. Happily for you, and for us, Fiddy went down the simple(ish) route, and here’s what happened: […]
Back for more – Hargreaves Lansdown, Part The Second
That’s been quite a day. Reaction to HL’s announcement has been pretty mixed – more than I thought it would have been. Hater of the day prize goes to Dan Hyde in the super soaraway Torygraph with this piece – “Why investors should leave Hargreaves Lansdown“. Others were a bit more measured, and for once […]
Big Bristol beasts bring the beat back – Hargreaves Lansdown unveils its pricing
So this is an unusual blog for us. I’m very conscious that quite a lot of real people, as opposed to financial industry apparatchiks, are going to read this given the nature of the subject. I’m afraid I’m going to have to be a bore and outline a couple of things up front. First, we’re […]
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 […]
