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 […]
The tedium of going o’er
The news yesterday that Aviva has stopped its workplace savings platform programme (read the story here and here) is interesting in lots of ways. Now, before the yellow and blue dudes reading this start reaching for the batphone to the legal heavies, I should mention that I’ve worked on the Aviva workplace savings programme on […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
