I’m in the hotseat today and OMG there’s so much going on right now where to start? As this arrives in your inbox Mr. Polson is touching down in London in his private jet ready to welcome delegates to our (like, totally sold out) AdviceTech Catwalk event tomorrow. I’m sad to not be there but I shouldn’t be part of anything involving sound judgements on early-adopter kit. I once bought a Barcode Battler. Remember them? No, you don’t. So eager was I to be some pre-teen tech bro I bought this monstrosity and then lied to everyone (including myself) that it was any good.
“Hey George, how about we cut out some barcodes from the cereal boxes and see what random numbers they give us. Doesn’t that sound WICKED?”
“Can we put the Megadrive on instead Steve?”
What else is going on? Kate, Mike, Rich and I are putting the finishing touches on our annual Advice Gap report and whilst I’d love to talk about it, it’s too early to give the good bits away. No doubt Mike or I will be back in your inboxes in a fortnight when we launch on 3rd July.
What does that leave then? Tennis grass season has started… too niche. And there is definitiv nein chance of me talking about the sheisse fussball after that monstrosity on Friday night.
No, instead I’m going to lean into Manifesto Season, surely one of the finest of all the seasons and come up with a manifesto of my own for our sector. Steve’s six-point plan for a brighter future.
- On the pension front, I heartily endorse this from my wise and learned colleagues Tom and Alison who make a compelling case for an independent long-term savings commission to try and come up with pragmatic, workable solutions around future demographic change. If the main political parties are too cowardly, cowardly custards to grasp the nettle properly then it might as well be devolved to some grown ups instead.
- Letters of Authority? Sort it out. Please can we listen to the good people here and the good people at Origo (we did a paper with them last year, #marketing) and sort this issue once and for all. It’s an absolute perversion that the advice profession routinely needs to apologise to clients on behalf of the industry on stuff like this.
- On a related note, every member of the FCA goes to work for someone else for a week. Half of you pop to advice firms and half of you to providers of all shapes and sizes. And then in year two swap over. One of my favourite wee spells at the lang cat was working on a big paper years ago where many of the good and great in advice opened their doors to me for a day. You understand anything better when you see it in action.
- Financial education is on my mind right now. Partly due to the Advice Gap report but also due to the fact my other half is a teacher and she’s been running groups in the local community to help with exam sprints and the like. I can’t help but nosey in on the maths side of things and wonder whether a module or two on the usage and application of things like debt, compound interest, mortgages, the basics of tax & savings etc. etc. could chip away at the problem and set our kids up ever so slightly better. Most problems in society aren’t just one thing, and this could be a thing that helps the bigger thing. Some people say I have a way with words.
- Ban the use of research in any marketing or industry copy unless sampling and methodology is listed. We absolutely need to separate the wheat (a cross section of members of the profession felt X about issue Y) versus the chaff (banana company discovers that use of bananas will increase). Same goes for awards and ratings.
- I’d put an end to BOPS. (Big Organisational Performative Sloganizing) It was mental health awareness week last month which is a big week for (1) mental health awareness but mainly (2) LinkedIn. I want to hear what you’re doing the other 51 weeks of the year thank you very much. Still on LinkedIn, everyone defining themselves as an entrepreneur goes on a survivorship bias course before being allowed to post. Oh, and those annoying wee messages on LinkedIn from strangers promising you an avalanche of new clients. I’d ban them too. How about those whoppers that talk about getting up at 4am to get ahead of the pack? Off you pop too. In fact, let’s just make this entire thing about LinkedIn. WHO’S WITH ME?
There we have it. On the one hand, six points that illustrate that a vote for Steve will lead to like, unlimited sunlit uplands and stuff. On the other hand, you could argue that some are grotesquely populist, poorly thought through and uncosted waffle for the sake of content. But that’s enough about manifestos for now…
If you’re coming to AdviceTech Catwalk tomorrow then I hope you have a marvelous time, in the meantime I’ll see you in a couple of weeks to talk all things Advice Gap.
Music for this week? Well, there’s only one choice. Please, please, please. Please.
