Welcome back, those of you who are just back. It’s been a frustrating few weeks for those of us up here in God’s country; we’re all refreshed and Having At It, but the sound coming from south of the Wall is that of crickets. Never mind, we’ve had all the big meetings while you were on a deckchair, and we’ve made sure to give you all the actions. It’s important that you feel involved.
Talking of God’s country, we’re coming up hard on our 2024 Scottish conference, HomeGame 4 which is in Edinburgh (just) on Thursday 3 October. A bit of a different gig this time; it starts in the afternoon and stretches into the early evening, and we’ve got a proper celeb for the evening slot and everything. As ever with us we’ll cram far too much content into it, there will be very good food and drink because why not and it will be a Good Time. You can stream some of it from home (not the sleb bit, sorry), but even better than that is coming in person and we have some advice professional tickets left, though not all that many because we can only seat 170. If you’re in, or can get to Edinburgh, do come along to what we’re pretty sure will be the biggest adviser-focused Scottish gig of the year. Full details and all that here.
You know you’re getting back into the swing of it when the news starts flying thick and fast, and that’s certainly the case at the moment. So the rest of this Update won’t be a big themed affair, but a few things that catch the eye in what is going to be a frisky few months. Don’t know about you, but I’m absolutely here for that, about time we had some fun.
First, it’s results day for M&G and a couple of things to note. As you can read here, the plan is still for M&G to sell the wealth platform (what we used to call Ascentric). I don’t think it’s a particularly guarded secret that the sale process has been what Sir Humphrey would probably call ‘complex’ up to this point. I don’t think that’s because there’s anything intrinsically problematic with the £15bn or so that’s on the platform; M&G and Royal London before them did a good job on cleaning it all up. But the other thing that’s been happening since the platform became part of the M&G stable is they’ve been working hard on integrating it ‘properly’ into the wider business, which makes perfect sense if you plan to stay with it long term but is a lot more problematic if you want to offload it after just a few years. So there’s going to be some untangling to do for whoever takes it next.
What does that mean for Update readers who have assets on the platform? Well, as ever it’s better for platforms to be owned by folk who want them rather than those who don’t, so assuming it finds a welcoming home that’s got to be a good thing. Beyond that we don’t know anything yet, so it’s a watching brief for now.
This is quite a big strategy shift for M&G which also sees the Wealth highheidyin Caroline Connellan leaving after only a year and Clive Bolton taking the wealth and life business under his wing. Does he have wings? I don’t know and probably neither do you, but if you have evidence then please share it.
Underneath all this is an interesting (to me at least) thematic around smoothed funds and the smooshing (technical term) of insured funds onto platforms. LV=, Wesleyan, Aviva, Standard Life and of course Pru – all are in the game and think they’ve got a ready market via platforms. Are they right? That’s kind of up to you…either way, M&G clearly sees the future more on the life side than anywhere else.
Two other quick things – if you’re a platform powernerd (bit of foreshadowing there, keep reading) then you’ll have raised all the eyebrows you have at the news about Adrian Durham, founder and jefe at FNZ, relinquishing CEO duties and moving to a non-exec role after 21 years. If you’re not a powernerd then you may be thinking ‘why do I care?’ but if you’ve used Quilter, SL/Abrdn, Aviva or a bunch of other platforms in the last two decades you’ve used Adrian’s handiwork. He’s replaced by a super-big hitter in the form of Blythe Masters from Motive Partners, the VC owner of a good chunk of FNZ.
And let’s round things off with this news from Succession, which has had to splurge a tidy £800k or so on cleaning house after a cyberattack. The attack itself was last year and hit the headlines at the time, but the costs of it are only just out in the firm’s results. Now, Succession is a big shop and has clearly put some of Aviva’s money where its mouth is in terms of offering clients and advisers monitoring from Experian for a year post-breach (this was a very good move). But it’s still another very useful case study of how much responsibility comes with taking more of the value chain on your shoulders and how fast things can spiral. Many of you have really solid data protection frameworks in place, but some of you don’t…time to think about where your data goes, who’s responsible for what and who’ll be carrying the can if something goes wrong.
Lots happening. Lots more to come…it’s going to be a fun few months.
And your music choice this week is something unapologetically stupid and fun because we can all use a bit of that. Please to enjoy the reliably unhinged Devin Townsend with his new very silly song Powernerd, which comes with a video that’s the best argument I’ve seen for banning people from having recording equipment in their houses.
