Flogging meat to the vegetarians

My good friend Alsy – the finest web manager in the third sector – sent me this story and it seemed pretty relevant as our industry tries to work out how to market itself better. Our hero is a fella by the name of Mac Macintosh. I suspect that is not his real first name. […]

Direct action

If you’ve been watching TV recently, you’ll have spotted that service is everywhere. In our new and shiny Big Society we do love a campaign, so while Hugh, Jamie et al are saving the fish, Mary Portas and Michel Roux Jr are on a mission to improve customer service in the UK. Most of this […]

Direct action

If you’ve been watching TV recently, you’ll have spotted that service is everywhere. In our new and shiny Big Society we do love a campaign, so while Hugh, Jamie et al are saving the fish, Mary Portas and Michel Roux Jr are on a mission to improve customer service in the UK. Most of this […]

Shopping baskets, platform charges and Rolos

Back in the day, when I was learning how to sell endowments and transparency was the stuff of a madman’s dreams, I was coached to describe the charging structure as a ‘shopping basket’ of charges. This masterstroke of metaphor was intended to neatly sweep away the complexity of initial units, allocation rates, policy fees, AMCs, […]

Shopping baskets, platform charges and Rolos

Back in the day, when I was learning how to sell endowments and transparency was the stuff of a madman’s dreams, I was coached to describe the charging structure as a ‘shopping basket’ of charges. This masterstroke of metaphor was intended to neatly sweep away the complexity of initial units, allocation rates, policy fees, AMCs, […]

Why platforms are so complicated

If you listen very closely you can hear the faint gnashing of teeth in various large office buildings round the country. It’s said sometimes that providers are now run by accountants, not actuaries. But actuaries, like certain water-borne infections, are hard to kill and they’re hard wired into the DNA of these large companies. Why […]

Why platforms are so complicated

If you listen very closely you can hear the faint gnashing of teeth in various large office buildings round the country. It’s said sometimes that providers are now run by accountants, not actuaries. But actuaries, like certain water-borne infections, are hard to kill and they’re hard wired into the DNA of these large companies. Why […]

Everyone’s a publisher now

Recently I’ve been reading and working on some client-facing materials (on and offline) for a couple of companies, big and small. Here’s a little cri de coeur from me. Think of it as a little set of guidelines if writing and publishing copy isn’t your stock-in-trade. If you’re going to publish content, behave like a […]

Everyone’s a publisher now

Recently I’ve been reading and working on some client-facing materials (on and offline) for a couple of companies, big and small. Here’s a little cri de coeur from me. Think of it as a little set of guidelines if writing and publishing copy isn’t your stock-in-trade. If you’re going to publish content, behave like a […]

setting the foxes to watch the henhouse

Sorry about the title of this post. Sometimes a piece jumps up that just fits into a cliche so neatly you can’t resist it, and this is one of those. Citywire reports that the UK Platform Group (broadly speaking the fund supermarkets) are putting together a proposal for a unified standard of disclosure for the […]

Impact of poor service

/ White papers

The Impact of Poor Service

We provided the research for a report, in conjunction with Parmenion, which reveals how far short of expectations many adviser platforms are falling. The research found that over the last 12 months, 88% of advisers needed to apologise to at least one of their clients on behalf of a platform, and that poor service delivery from platforms impacts 91% of advisers every day.

Impact of poor service

/ White papers

The Impact of Poor Platform Service

We provided the research for a report, in conjunction with Parmenion, which reveals how far short of expectations many adviser platforms are falling. The research found that over the last 12 months, 88% of advisers needed to apologise to at least one of their clients on behalf of a platform, and that poor service delivery from platforms impacts 91% of advisers every day.

/ White papers

Answering the Call

Service means a lot of things to a lot of different people. It’s so subjective it can be hard to put your finger on. This paper aims to challenge the status quo and inertia that’s built up in the sector for many years.