It’s very nearly that time, siblings – the speakers are briefed, the merch – merch! – has arrived, the afterparty is prepped, the production team is reaching the outer edges of mania and I am realising that once again I should have done more work on my bits weeks ago. #langcatlive is back next Thursday with our 2025 London event, Divide And Conquer at Kings Place. Well over 300 tickets are gone already, but we have about 15 spaces left and so if you were thinking about what to do next Thursday then this is what you should do. We’re not streaming it this year, so if you want to see what’s going on you only have one choice. Tickets are either free or very cheap depending on where you work. Get on it. Last chance.
No shortage of things we could cover this week quite apart from Upcoming Events. It’s very tempting to put the boot into what I saw brilliantly called the ‘broligarchs’ who are a bit less wealthy after DeepSeek launched a new chat-based AI costing only $6m plus the massed resources of a huge Chinese hedge fund called High-Flyer. One’s heart bleeds. Fun fact (1): DeepSeek’s owner previously employed AI to run quant trading strategies to exploit inefficiencies in the Chinese retail stock market. It didn’t go well.
But an extended riff on bros in Patagonia gilets losing a few quid and having to settle for a lesser vintage isn’t what you’re here for. And we have something new to look at in our own corner of global finance. That’s right, there’s a new platform on the block! I don’t mean the blockchain. I mean the block, of the sort that Jenny is from, except not quite like that because we’re not American and also I don’t mean Jenny our head of marketing who is currently ripping her hair out at my inability to prep my sessions for next week but Jennifer Lopez who, so far as I’m aware, has very little to do with the UK platform market. I’m glad we’ve had this talk.
Anyway, the LV= platform is now live, and if there’s a new platform we should talk about it. And the first thing we should say is it’s not new-new; it’s been in a sort of liminal existence phase for a wee while now, but is now properly out there. (For clarity: LV= isn’t a lang cat client and we have no commercial interest in writing about this, so there.)
Sitting underneath this is Lloyds-Scottish Widows-Embark’s white-label structure with FNZ, so that’s what that is. There’s an interesting nugget in there – it’s clear FNZ isn’t chasing after every platform deal in the market at this point and as we’ll see the LV= proposition is a bit niche, so Embark/SW/LBG is kind of filling that void for them. Not adviser-as-platform so much as lifeco-as-platform. Life has changed a lot in the last 20 years. Anyway.
(Quick punt: you can find out most of what you need to know about LV=’s platform (god I hate using the possessive after that equals sign) on Analyser, which has a new charging structure that’s better for firms who only want to do quick-hit due diligence once or twice a year rather than running price comparisons or accessing our reports and guides. Sign up here. End of punt.)
Because this sits on that well-kent structure, you naturally get the stuff you get from any FNZ platform and that will be familiar to many of you. You get a SIPP, a junior SIPP, an ISA, a JISA (well, soon) and a GIA. You get FAD, capped, UFPLS, PCLS but not drip-feed yet. There’s a full range of funds, some DFMs and none of the kinky stuff.
Most importantly and interestingly (for LV= at least) is the availability of their smoothed managed funds in everything except the GIA. Your opinion on LV=’s (arrrrgh) smoothed managed proposition is your own, but to me it’s one of a crop of contenders (others include Wesleyan and Aviva) trying to take lumps out of the behemoth that is Prufund, and most of these are properly worth a look now.
Pricing is pretty keen at the lower end, starting as it does at 0.27% up to £700k which is unusual but OK, whatever, and then drops to 0.125% for the rest, three significant figures still being a thing in lifeco-as-platform land. Wouldn’t want to miss out on that half a basis point! So notso-hotso for well-padded clients, but not terrible either. I can’t imagine individuals pouring millions onto this but any that do will probably be able to pick up a special deal anyway.
I haven’t had a demo, but I’m assuming everything looks like FNZ platforms normally look and will work in the same way. I know SW/Embark has its issues on its own platform as a result of its – shall we say – complex history, but this is a greenfield proposition and hopefully will tick along perfectly acceptably.
So really we are left with one proper question, and it’s a biggie. LV= itself says the platform is aimed at those approaching retirement (a “retirement-focused platform” in marketingese). It’s not the first to say this; lots of platforms have made this claim over time, mainly because – stop the presses! – if you’re charging basis points you get more money from people who have already accumulated assets than from those who are accumulating. I am yet to see advisers and planners be convinced that moving a client from one platform which has FAD, UFPLS etc etc but doesn’t put itself out there as “retirement-focused” to another which has the same stuff but does characterise itself that way is necessary or even desirable. Maybe it works as a marketing line where an adviser takes on a client who’s just reaching that stage, but I’m pretty sure other issues (and by other issues I mean ‘service reputation’) trump everything else.
That’s the way it is. But is the addition of a smoothed managed fund to the investment mix enough to change this? What if you really like that as part of the investment approach but can’t be arsed splitting a client across insured products and platforms? If that’s what your client needs and you are happy enough that platform functionality is now sufficiently commoditised so that you will use something like this and you’re convinced the service will be good enough, then you are the use case for this particular niche offer. If that is you, we’d love to hear from you.
And your music choice this week isn’t the sort of thing I normally serve up, but sometimes stuff just burrows into your brain, rot or no rot, and won’t get out. Such a one is Hooked by Franz Ferdinand, the new single, which sees them assume their final form as the Weegie Sparks; there are worse things to be. Anyway, you may be Hooked by this too if you let it get close enough, and you shouldn’t resist if the opportunity presents itself. Fun fact (2): Audrey Tait, the new FF drummer, used to be in legendary Glasgow hip-hop act and former Update music pick Hector Bizerk, and here she is. Bonus Audrey there.
