Here’s a headline which may need some explanation if you’re not an ‘industry insider’. In the last several years, larger advice firms backed by private equity investors have been buying small advice firms, usually run by older advisers (the average age in our profession is still 59.5). More specifically, they have been buying their clients and taking over the money they have invested, with the original advisers heading into the sunset after a year or two of handover. The next phase of this trend is now coming as we start to see ‘consolidation of consolidators’, with those private equity investors wanting out (often as rates increase on the money they borrowed to buy) and they sell to others with still deeper pockets. And so the houses of cards and the administrative and, more importantly, compliance and regulatory frameworks need to support them, grow ever more complex…and, mark my words, the full circle back to small from big, will once again complete.
“Pensions minister: ‘we have created saving pots, but not a pension system’”
The OBR (Office of Budget Responsibility, as opposed to the OBI, often said to be housed in No.11) said this week that pensions were one of the biggest problems to be faced by this and future governments.
