Our regular round-up of the latest insights on investment distribution
How Vanguard will disrupt the advice market
Vanguard has introduced another potential game changer with its advice offering, which it formally launched last weekend. Vanguard Personal Financial Planning is pretty compelling in terms of price, at 0.79% all-in. Detractors who favour full-fat financial advice...
Platforms versus back office systems – each has its place.
Over half of advisers tell us that their back office system is more important for the day-to-day running of their businesses than the platforms they use. Back office systems have now established themselves as the primary technology system in adviser firms, although...
Adviser platforms end 2020 on a high
Many adviser platforms suffered a noticeable downturn in new business in the second and third quarters of 2020. This was the inevitable knock-on effect of the downturn in advisers’ new business during the pandemic. Advisers have managed to keep hold of their...
Robust retirement PROD-ing
Client segmentation is incompatible with treating each client as an individual with particular goals, needs and circumstances – we hear this regularly from advisers. The regulator’s desire for advisers to categorise clients sounds great on paper, but advisers are...
We’re going to need a bigger brand
The company formally known as Standard Life is selling the name, but this isn’t a total surprise given that 200 years of brand awareness had been diluted by mixing in Aberdeen. How to retain some of the positive associations of a brand recognised widely in the UK,...
Understanding end investors’ shifts on ESG: not just the ‘what’, but also the ‘why’
UK retail investors have become much more conscious of environmental and social issues than they were before COVID-19. Even more important, investors are now much more likely to act on these ideas. Fund flows in 2020 are clear proof of that. This shift in attitude...