Consumer Duty continues to provide significant challenge to the charging structures of intermediaries. It does feel – to some extent – that larger players are moving before they are required to do so.
Fairstone has moved to a single charging structure with an ongoing advice fee of 80 basis points, with chief executive Chief executive Lee Hartley acknowledging the Consumer Duty’s influence as Professional Adviser reports. The old charging structure had applied for the past 15 years, he says, so interestingly just predating the RDR.
The firm has streamlined its previous three-tier offering into one default ‘ActivePlan’ service with a digitial advice offer as well.
This is an interesting story in FTAdviser bringing the Post Office scandal a little closer to the world of IFAs.
Research by analysts Tussell found that Fujitsu had won 197 public sector contracts since 2012 for its technology services.
These included 12 contracts from the FCA worth £557m as well as 11 from HMRC worth a combined £1.096bn.
The big question surely is what are they being used for and will be they be reviewed.
It would also be interesting to see if any advisers have had involvement perhaps working with some of the postmasters.
Quilter has appointed former Hargreaves Lansdown CEO Chris Hill as an independent non-executive director, reports Financial Planning.
The structural changes underway in the global economy mean economic forecasting is more difficult than ever, says Rupert Thompson, chief economist at Kingswood, talking to Financial Adviser.
This is quite clearly very true for 2024, though I would argue it actually dates back to the rise of China certainly since it joined the World Trade Organisation.
Succession has bought a Plymouth-based advice firm DFP Health & Wealth Management with £165m worth of assets as New Model Adviser reports. The firm was formerly with Quilter. A map outlining of all these movements would certainly tell us a lot about who is up and who is down, or perhaps who is paying most!
