Good morning and welcome to your Morning Briefing for Friday 30 June, 2023. To get this in your inbox every morning click here.
Higher earnings at consolidators
Average earnings are higher for adviser managers employed by private-equity-backed consolidators than they are for those employed by other advice firms, new research by recruitment firm Paul Harper Search has revealed.
The study found that, for individuals employed as first- or second-line adviser managers for a private equity-backed financial advice consolidator, the average basic salaries are £96,250 and £139,833, respectively.
Don’t try to compete with AI
If a machine could produce a beautiful financial plan at the touch of a button, does that devalue the work of a financial planner?
The role of a planner is both humanistic and mechanistic.
A planner I know with over 30 years in the industry has recently sold his practice. Now on his earnout, he told me he found it difficult going from being boss to arguing with a 22-year-old paraplanner on a compliance issue.
Quote Of The Day
Bringing crypto into the scope of UK law could be a boon for the sector in the coming years as it dispels uncertainty about the treatment of crypto products and assets.
– Dan Moczulski, UK managing director of trading and investment platform eToro, comments on the financial services and markets bill receiving royal assent
Stat Attack
New research by digital asset manager Collidr shows the average annual return for money market funds during periods where inflation is above 2% is 5.73% – 39% less than the average return for S&P 500 equities at 9.43%.
Returns of cash-equivalents investments and equities during periods of inflation
Source: Bloomberg/St. Louis Federal Reserve/Collidr
In Other News
Confluence Technologies, a global technology solutions provider to the investment management industry, has announced the first development out of its innovation lab that leverages AI technology to solve complex industry problems.
As the first application, the Confluence innovation lab applies Large Language Models (LLM) to solve reconciliation challenges from the SEC’s Tailored Shareholder Reports (TSR).
The new tool, Confluence Unity Rex, mines and pinpoints discrepancies in language and numeric information between financial reports and the TSR, delivering significant efficiency and cost savings in the reconciliation process.
The Schroder BSC Social Impact Trust (SBSI) has released its second annual Impact Report, which details the social impact of investments made by the company on behalf of its clients since its inception in 2020.
SBSI offers investors access to a diversified portfolio of private market, high impact investment opportunities.
It connects charities and social enterprises to capital which they might be unable to access from traditional lenders, helping them to scale and create widespread and measurable social benefit to communities. This impact is demonstrated within the report.
From Elsewhere
Bankers’ fees plunge to near-decade low owing to deal drought (Financial Times)
US bank stocks rise as lenders shrug off turmoil to ace Fed health checks (Reuters)
Rising inflation means British water companies are leaking money (Bloomberg)
Did You See?
The scores are in. After sifting through numerous submissions, our judges have managed to whittle down the entries to the best of the best.
Money Marketing is looking forward to celebrating the achievements of the advice profession and of the companies that support advisers in their everyday work.
In the year since our previous awards the geopolitical situation has worsened, while inflation, surging interest rates and more expensive mortgages are all biting into client finances. All of that has kept advisers extremely busy, day in and day out.
It has been a pleasure to see the magnificent efforts people have made to enter one or more of our 27 categories. We introduced two new awards this year: Best Adviser Academy and Best Investment Research Service for Advisers.
Judges have individually contacted us to say how impressed they were by the quality of entries. We know how demanding the day job can be, so thank you to everyone who has taken the time to enter the Money Marketing Awards. Congratulations to all who have made it to the shortlist.
