The Top Class Wednesday Update squares a circle, or circles a square

Mark on Standard Life’s new £1k fixed fee advice service and how it links with training and the advice gap.
The Top Class Wednesday Update is relaxing with loud noises

Rich is in the Update hot seat this week.
The Top Class Wednesday Update still has a little wind in its sails

Mark chats about new retirement investment developments.
The Top Class Wednesday Update doesn’t want to hear it

Oh in the name of the wee man, here we go again. Last time – 2014 if you please – some wag dubbed the Scottish independence referendum ‘the neverendum’ (actually it was first used for one of the Quebecois referenda) and that resonated with a lot of people on both sides. We now face another […]
The Top Class Wednesday Update builds back…oh never mind

Some weeks the initial whimsy just defeats you. In a world of government by bantz, where auto-satire is somehow all good, where there are no surprises and where everything everyone said would happen is now happening, where does a humble Updater turn? Probably to the whisky bottle, that’s where – and a bit more on […]
THE TOP CLASS WEDNESDAY UPDATE SAYS IT’S ALL IN THE MIND

Hello, hello, me again. Sorry for breaching your inboxes yesterday in an unexpected fashion and thanks to all who dropped a note to say you’d voted for Steve for Professional Adviser’s Personality of the Year. Double thanks to those of you who managed to crack a joke about Steve’s personality too – all of those […]
DON’T LOOK BACK IN ANGER WITH THE TOP CLASS WEDNESDAY UPDATE

Nostalgia, siblings, ain’t what it used to be. Nor are many other things, including (in no particular order): my eyesight, the size of playground slides, the age of policemen, the state of our democracy, and assets under administration in the UK advised platform market. Whoops! See what I did there, Susan, I snuck a little […]
SCORES ON THE DOORS – HOW THE ADVISED PLATFORM MARKET FARED IN 2018

Well, the covers are off and we now have full year 2018 data for the advised platform market. It’s been quite a year – if it was a box set we reckon it would be series 2 of The Wire. It’s been that gripping. You’ll no doubt read lots of stuff about individual company results […]
ELEVATE DEFLATES ITS PRICING

Let’s go old school for a minute. It’s been simply yonks since I’ve done a pricing blog; back in the day it felt like I did two a week. I imagine it felt worse than that to anyone reading them. Anyway, after a long time of very little change in platform pricing, things are on […]
WELCOME TO THE INAUGURAL TOP CLASS WEDNESDAY UPDATE

HELLO, YOU So here’s the thing. You were all nice enough to sign up to hear from the lang cat at some point over the last few years, and when we offered you the chance to stop you chose not to. And what do we do? We don’t even send you so much as a […]