Our regular round-up of the latest insights on investment distribution
Select Lists and Select Committees
With the Woodford furore well into its second week, the focus has moved onto platforms. Hargreaves Lansdown has a list of questions from the Treasury Select Committee to answer by next Tuesday. How often are select list inclusions considered and what impact do they...
Jeremy Fawcett 14 June 2019
Woodford’s liquidity crisis
Many investment professionals were promoting the Woodford Equity Income fund to investors, so what are the practical implications of the gating debacle for the retail channel? Platforum data on direct platform select lists shows that at the start of 2018, Woodford...
Jeremy Fawcett and Andrew Ashwood 07 June 2019
European platforms as data businesses
If the role of the EU’s Financial Services Action Plan is to harmonise financial services across Europe, then MiFID II is, so far, hardly a roaring success. National interpretations of the rules differ, there are carve outs for segments of the industry and...
Richard Bradley 31 May 2019
The raging debate on retirement income
The debate around how to generate sustainable retirement income has continued to rage this week. Pre-pension freedoms, this problem hardly existed: the requirement of a base level of guaranteed income before accessing flexible drawdown effectively excluded all but...
Richard Bradley 24 May 2019
Platform assets return to growth, but flows continue to suffer
Stock markets rallied in the first quarter of 2019, and with that adviser platforms have returned to asset growth. Based on the latest Platforum market data, adviser platform assets rose by 6.7% in the period to stand just shy of the £500bn mark. The main story of...
Andrew Ashwood 17 May 2019
Delivering retirement income
For all but the wealthiest, generating enough income to meet wants and needs in retirement, is not straightforward. For advisers, building reliable strategies to provide that whole of life income is a major challenge. ONS data shows a rapid shift in the coming...
Andrew Ashwood 10 May 2019