Platforms & Pensions
It ’ s interesting that while even many climate change sceptics now appear to grudgingly admit we may be in trouble , nobody is grasping the nettle of solving it
here and there – maturing nicely , one would say . The need to invest and innovate to attract new customers was replaced by a veritable stampede of new business , propagated by Covid lockdowns and the fact that investing seemed like a good thing to do when you had time and money on your hands . I had theorised that the success of Vanguard ’ s simple direct-toconsumer offering would have awoken the fund management industry and by now we ’ d be buying model portfolios from Schroders Direct , L & G4U , M & G Online , Invesco . com or other websites affiliated with a fund manager who wanted a piece of Vanguard ’ s action . How wrong I was . It seems like our fund management industry just isn ’ t keen on dealing with customers directly , preferring instead to work with distributors such as financial advisers and investment platforms . The concept of disintermediation and the lower costs associated with fewer people taking a slice of our
Issue 93 - March 2023 / 61 /