Good morning and welcome to your Morning Briefing for Friday 22 September 2023. To get this in your inbox every morning click here.
Meet the Money Marketing Awards 2023 winners
The great and the good of the financial advice profession gathered at The Londoner last night, to celebrate the winners of the Money Marketing Awards 2023 at a glitzy ceremony.
Find out who won here.
The real threat to civilisation
There’s been a fair bit of speculation in recent months about the potential rise of artificial intelligence.
Will it get clever enough to enslave or even wipe out the human race, as it has done in countless film franchises?
But the real threat to humanity is something much more sinister…
Quote Of The Day
There’s little doubt the chancellor will be coming under increasing pressure to yank the magic money tree out from under the stairs and plant it proudly in the garden of Number 11 ahead of the next election.
– Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell, comments on the latest UK public sector finances
Stat Attack
NextWealth’s latest report (Advice Tech Foundations: Stability and satisfaction in adviser tech) finds that a fifth of financial advice firms plan to make a change to their tech stack in the next 12 months, with many of those deciding to rationalise their tech rather than switch providers.
£5.20
The amount firms spend on their back-office, for every £1 spent on their client portal
7%
Fewer firms this year say they have in place, or refer clients, to a digital advice offering
13%
The share of firms which say they are developing or considering developing a digital advice offering remained steady
One in seven
Firms have switched cashflow modelling tools in the last 12 months
Source: NextWealth
In Other News
The first winners of the Equilibrium Foundation Grant Awards have been announced. The six winning charitable organisations in the North West will receive a share of £60,000.
The awards, launched in April of this year, provide annual funding to smaller, lesser-known charities in the North West of England. Introduced by The Equilibrium Foundation, the charitable giving arm of Cheshire-based Equilibrium Financial Planning, the awards centre around a different theme each year.
With 34% of children in the North West living in poverty, an increase of 5% since 2015, and the cost of living crisis worsening the situation for many, the inaugural awards invited applications from not-for-profit organisations working to alleviate child poverty in the region.
The six winning organisations are: Manchester-based Norbook Youth Club; Home-Start; Bare Necessities; The Bolton Toy Library; Prevent 2 Protect; and the Swinton Lions Community Sports Foundation.
From Elsewhere
Bank of Japan maintains ultra-low interest rates (Financial Times)
California lets insurers factor wildfire risks in rates to widen coverage (Reuters)
Retail sales recovery hurt by weaker fuel demand as prices shoot up (Sky News)
Did You See?
Consumer Duty has four outcomes. However, one could believe there is only one judging by all the column inches devoted to price and value in the run up to the July deadline, says Tim Sargisson, writing for Money Marketing.
The focus, he says, has prompted the necessary debate about how firms measure and deliver against something as intangible as “value”.
It reminded me of Treating Customer’s Fairly and the head scratching among advisers over the notion of measuring “fairness”.
