Welcome our blog. This is where we share thought-provoking, no-holds-barred opinions and commentaries on all things retirement income, financial planning and investing!
Is Praemium hanging by a thread?
We've been accused of 'obsessing over profitability' of platforms a few times lately. Fair enough, but then again it's no greater a crime than obsessing over cost or whatever else happens to be your own addiction. We're all human and we all have addictions right?...
Wealthtime: The Small Giant of Platform Land
The platform industry talks a great deal about the importance of scale - large providers are assumed to be financially strong, profitable, sustainable and resilient; smaller providers, not so much. But we've always argued that, while scale isn't bad thing, the...
Guide To Platform Profitability 2015
We're beyond thrilled to publish the second edition of the Platform Profitability Guide (2015)! When we first published the report last year, some of you thought we are barking mad.... and you're probably right, but the recent events in the platform market has...
Are Guaranteed Drawdown Products Worth The Paper They Are Written On?
Thanks to Pension Freedoms, and the demonisation (yes, that’s a real word) of annuities, around additional £8bn a year is now expected to find its way into drawdown products. But with drawdown comes the risk of running out of money, no thanks to sequence risk and...
Does Cash Flow Reserve Reduce ‘Pound Cost Ravaging’ In Retirement Portfolios?
How much cash should you hold in a drawdown portfolio? In the light of recent market declines, we've seen more and more discussions around the effect of sequence risk and pound-cost ravaging for clients in pension drawdown, and specifically on the benefits (or...
Axa Elevate’s up for sale? Follow the money.
Just as we started collating data for our next Platform Profitability Guide, we're hit with the news that Axa has apparently put the entire Axa Wealth business on sale - Elevate platform, SIPP, corporate pensions, Architas – the whole lot! You probably didn't that...
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