Hello you lot, me again back after a couple of weeks gallivanting around the place. My best gallivant was off to South Africa to speak to a bunch of planners in a couple of large rooms, and I have to say it was the best time. SA is obviously a very different place to here, and my goodness does it have its problems. But planners and advisers there aren’t too different to here; the issues aren’t a million miles apart, but more importantly neither are the benefits of getting good financial planning and good advice. 

I know it’s easy to get lost in the detail of regulation-this and portfolio-that and platform-the-other, and lord only knows I get a kick out of doing that. But seeing the universality of what it is you do was a welcome shot of altitude. It ended up being a really special week in lots of ways.  

If you want to find out anything about how UK adviser life is similar to or different from SA adviser life, may I commend this to your peepers. Somewhat rarely these days, it’s a paper wot I wrote meself mainly, and it was good fun to do. No worries if not. (warning: that opens a link with a funny song that has proper swears in it).  

Anyway, as if I wasn’t feeling soppy and happy enough, we’ve only been and went and gone and sold out the AdviceTech Catwalk tomorrow. This is a nice thing to be able to say as a lot of folk have put a lot of work into it, and five folk in particular tomorrow from our demonstrators will be absolutely bricking it in front of a churchful of you lot and our High Inquisitors who are armed with Barbs and Razors. I myself will be armed with a clipboard and not, for the very first time at a lang cat event, a microphone – no stage time for me. That’s an odd feeling, but I can’t wait to just be watching and enjoy the day.  

We should probably do a little bit of business, and it’s noticeable that as we hit the season for corporate announcements from Q1, things look to be pretty bullish for a lot of platforms. The main reason we should care about that is that the health of the platform sector, outside of any daftness that individual platforms may get up to (those wacky scamps!) is a pretty good proxy for the health of the advisory / planning sector as a whole. So we’ve got good figures from all round really; I noticed AJ Bell completing the £90bn level of Super Platform Land: Extreme Edition (£90bn? Completed it mate), and divers others are also in a Good Mood. 

I thought this was an interesting piece quoting Mr Jennings of Parmenionshire on the adviser-as-platform model. The headline is a bit more grabby than the substance – nice one Jack, still got it – but Martin’s main assertion is worth thinking about. That is that the lobster-pot of adviser-as-platform models which will be the home for all or most assets for consolidators isn’t as well-baited as many expected, despite those tasty, tasty basis points for being a manufacturer.  

Those propositions still exist, but here’s the thing: the more developed what we call ‘private label’ platforms become, the more they look like the rest of the market; the more complex they get and the more issues they inevitably have – not because they’re bad, just because that’s what life’s like. And so best advice becomes more tricky, as differentiation falls away, and that does probably lead to a bit of hedging as Martin describes.  

Add to that the fact that individual advisers, unless they’re driven to a TAMP-style tied or pseudo-tied model, tend to be a bit ornery and to have their own preferences, and I just wonder how much of the consolidator investment case for PE and other capital providers rests on all that consolidator’s assets being in one place. I also wonder how I made that last sentence quite that long. I wonder a lot of things, these days. 

I just get the feeling that there’s a whole lot of stuff to play out across all the competing forces at play here. We might try not to get lost in that platform-the-other detail, but when it all comes down to it, there’s no use trying to pretend that where a client’s assets sit isn’t properly important. And detail matters. 

And your music choice – well, given it’s Catwalk week, we need the best song ever to feature a catwalk. It is not Right Said Fred. It is, however, Incubus by Marillion, which is not only just super awesome throughout but also has one of my favouritest ever guitar solos in it. Please enjoy this live version from a time when it was OK for a massive Hibby to cut about the stage in his vest with his ample physique on show and for the audience to love it. Days of thunder, I tell you. Let the cats walk…