Direct investment platforms are growing faster than the advised market. Is this simply a story about apps and advertising—or an early signal that people are changing the kind of help they want? By Steve Conley, Founder, Academy of Life Planning30 September 2026 For years, the familiar message has been: financial decisions are complicated, so find … Continue reading From advice to agency: are investors signalling a bigger shift?
Tag: personal-finance
Your experience is not behind you. It is your most valuable asset.
Introducing Get ICE: I Continue Earning There is a familiar script for later life. Work hard, save enough, reach a certain age, and stop earning. For many people, that script no longer fits. Some want to keep contributing. Some need more income than their savings will provide. Many feel both things at once. Yet the … Continue reading Your experience is not behind you. It is your most valuable asset.
The life plan is yours. Who owns the assets?
A question for life planners working inside regulated firms You sit with someone and ask what matters. You help them see the life they want, the trade-offs they face and the choices they can make. It is the most human part of planning. Then the commercial machinery starts. The plan identifies assets. The firm brings … Continue reading The life plan is yours. Who owns the assets?
Interactive Investor Has Broken One Link. Now Let’s Break the Other.
If the price of advice need not rise with your wealth, why should the duration of advice rise with your lifetime? Something important happened in financial advice this week. Interactive Investor launched an ongoing financial advice service for £100 a month for an individual and £150 a month for a couple. There are no initial … Continue reading Interactive Investor Has Broken One Link. Now Let’s Break the Other.
When the Badge Becomes the Blindfold
Before You Trust the Badge, Use Intelligence A difficult conversation with QROPS victims forced me to revisit what regulation actually does, what it does not do, and why understanding should come before intermediation. It also reminded me that the people trying to help have feelings too. It is after three in the morning as I … Continue reading When the Badge Becomes the Blindfold
Permission Is Not Protection: What British Expats Need to Know Before Trusting a “Locally Regulated” Financial Adviser
If you are a British expatriate with a UK pension, “find someone regulated where you live” sounds like sensible consumer protection. It may not be enough. Imagine you spent your working life in Britain. Perhaps you worked for the NHS, a local authority, the armed forces or a private employer. You built up a valuable … Continue reading Permission Is Not Protection: What British Expats Need to Know Before Trusting a “Locally Regulated” Financial Adviser
Your Future Financial Life Cannot Be Separated From the Future World in Which You Will Live
What might the future require of me — and what forms of wealth will help me meet it? Most financial plans make forecasts. They forecast your pension. Your investments. Your income. Your expenditure. Inflation. Investment returns. Perhaps your life expectancy. Then they project those numbers twenty, thirty or forty years into the future. But there … Continue reading Your Future Financial Life Cannot Be Separated From the Future World in Which You Will Live
Two Ways to Delegate Your Wealth: Bundled Advice or Specialist Delegation?
If you have accumulated significant wealth, who should you delegate it to? For many people, the conventional answer is simple: Find a good Independent Financial Adviser and let them look after it. There is another way. Instead of asking one advisory relationship to encompass planning, investments, products and ongoing oversight, you can separate the jobs: … Continue reading Two Ways to Delegate Your Wealth: Bundled Advice or Specialist Delegation?
Why Does a Three-Hour Problem Lead Naturally to a Thirty-Year Commercial Relationship?
Why Does a Three-Hour Problem Lead Naturally to a Thirty-Year Commercial Relationship? If you can now earn a good living solving people's financial problems without capturing their assets, why are you still making surrender of the assets a condition of helping them? A person walks into a financial planner's office with a problem. Perhaps they … Continue reading Why Does a Three-Hour Problem Lead Naturally to a Thirty-Year Commercial Relationship?
NatWest Wants 500,000 Investors. I Suggested Part of the Model Almost 20 Years Ago.
Democratising Coutts investment capability is a good idea. Calling a product-distribution pathway financial planning would not be. There is something rather familiar about NatWest's ambition to grow the number of its retail customers who invest with the bank from around 170,000 to more than 500,000. I know because, almost 20 years ago, I was sitting … Continue reading NatWest Wants 500,000 Investors. I Suggested Part of the Model Almost 20 Years Ago.
