Check before the sales journey becomes a medical decision Today, The Times reports that British regulators are playing “whack-a-mole” against organised criminals selling counterfeit weight-loss medicines through fake online pharmacies. According to the investigation, UK consumers accessed around 5,000 suspected fake-pharmacy websites during 2025. Regulators have disrupted more than 1,500 illegal sites, but new ones … Continue reading When Fake Pharmacies Look Real, “Does This Look Professional?” Is the Wrong Question
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The Man in the Suit Was Me. But He Is Not Me Now.
Why Total Wealth Planner now reflects the person—and the proposition—you can experience today For years, the Total Wealth Planner website featured a photograph of me in a suit. I looked younger. Successful. Confident. Prosperous. It was a professional photograph of the sort commonly used throughout financial services. It conveyed experience, authority and achievement. The photograph … Continue reading The Man in the Suit Was Me. But He Is Not Me Now.
BIG Checker™ Has Grown Beyond Money
BIG Checker™ Has Grown Beyond Money The agency-preserving claim checker for wealth, health and everything in between Most misleading communications do not begin with a lie. They begin with something true. A scientific finding. A regulatory approval. A manufacturing certificate. A respected institution. A real risk. A genuine human fear. Then, somewhere between the evidence … Continue reading BIG Checker™ Has Grown Beyond Money
The Establishment Is Defended. The Market Keeps Moving. The Profession Is Left Looking Backwards.
A professional body may believe it is protecting financial planning by excluding challenges to the established model. It may actually be protecting its members from the very ideas they most need to hear. I was scrolling through the programme for this year’s Festival of Financial Planning when the pattern became difficult to ignore. There were … Continue reading The Establishment Is Defended. The Market Keeps Moving. The Profession Is Left Looking Backwards.
When Human Agency Looks Like Sales Resistance
Why the “DIY client” may be the future of financial planning, not a prospect to defeat I recently read a sales article about how advisers should handle people who prefer to manage their own finances. It described the “DIY prospect” as a battle. Advisers were told to weed such people out before they wasted time, … Continue reading When Human Agency Looks Like Sales Resistance
When a Professional Body No Longer Recognises the Profession
The Personal Finance Society is losing members. Is retirement really the whole explanation—or is it suffering from a growing relevance deficit? The Personal Finance Society has lost almost 2,000 members in a year. According to its 2025 Annual Report, membership fell from 38,703 to 36,807—a decline of 4.9%. Membership revenue fell from £7.66 million to … Continue reading When a Professional Body No Longer Recognises the Profession
When fraud takes your money it also tries to take your agency
£70M FRAUD. 15 YEARS IN JAIL. BUT WHO HELPS THE VICTIMS? The latest release of The Recoverer ™ is now available free at http://www.the-recoverer.app A £70 million pension fraud has ended with three men in prison. But the story exposes a harder truth: justice may arrive years later, while victims need a practical way to … Continue reading When fraud takes your money it also tries to take your agency
A Faster Answer to the Wrong Question Is Still Wrong
PARLIAMENT • REDRESS • HUMAN AGENCY A Faster Answer to the Wrong Question Is Still Wrong Parliament is redesigning financial regulation in the name of growth. But efficiency without effective challenge may simply make consumer harm easier to finalise—and harder to correct. Academy of Life Planning 8 September 2026 There is a familiar promise at … Continue reading A Faster Answer to the Wrong Question Is Still Wrong
The Future Isn’t Trusted AI. It’s Capable Humans Using AI.
People are already asking AI what to buy, what to invest in, what something means and what they should do next. There is just one problem. They do not necessarily trust the answers. Recent McKinsey research found significant scepticism towards algorithm-driven sources of information, with trust in generative AI below 40 per cent. Yet consumers … Continue reading The Future Isn’t Trusted AI. It’s Capable Humans Using AI.
Britain Has Been Growing the Wrong Thing
For forty years, governments have treated financial-services growth as though it were national economic growth. Andy Burnham now has an opportunity to change that — by making human agency, capability and the wealth of ordinary people the real engine of prosperity. Will Andy Burnham Change Britain’s Growth Strategy, and grow the wealth of ordinary people … Continue reading Britain Has Been Growing the Wrong Thing
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