The Morning Briefing: Tyndall growth drive and Perspective acquisitions

Good morning and welcome to your Morning Briefing for Tuesday 3 October 2023. To get this in your inbox every morning click here.

Tyndall growth drive

Boutique wealth and fund manager Tyndall Investment Management continues its growth drive with the appointment of two new private client directors.

Edward Baring and Ed Harvey both join from Walker Crips Investment Management bringing “considerable” industry experience to “further strengthen” Tyndall’s investment team dedicated to private clients and charities.

Perspective acquisitions

Perspective Financial Group has completed two further acquisitions, bringing its total acquisition count in 2023 to 17.

In total, the group has made 73 acquisitions since it was founded 16 years ago, and now has 35 offices across the UK, 120 financial planners and a total of 450 staff.

Consumer Duty and vulnerable clients

Given the Consumer Duty’s focus on positive outcomes for all, dealing with vulnerability is not a bridge advice firms can cross if or when they stumble across it.

Firms now have a greater responsibility to identify vulnerability in all its forms while ensuring everything they provide and everything they do meets the needs of clients in vulnerable circumstances.

But, in this feature, Amanda Newman Smith asks: Could the Consumer Duty make it harder for vulnerable clients to get advice?

Quote Of The Day

Although the state pension looks set to be boosted by a second significant increase it is unlikely it will provide more than a very basic income.

– Stephen Lowe, group communications director at retirement specialist Just Group, comments on the fact that Thursday marks State Pension Shortfall Day – the point in 2023 when the average single pensioner would have exhausted the full state pension

In Other News

Schroder British Opportunities Trust has announced that director Diana Dyer Bartlett has been appointed as senior independent non-executive director of the company, in addition to her role as chair of the audit and risk committee.

Separately, the company has also decided to form a new valuations committee, to be chaired by director Tim Jenkinson, a leading authority on private equity and the mechanisms of valuation.

This decision recognises the importance of the board’s oversight role on valuations and the need for shareholders to have confidence in the outcomes.

The valuations committee will review, and where necessary challenge, the valuations carried out by the specialist in-house valuations team at Schroders.

This team operates independently of the portfolio management team. Valuations are calculated using established methodologies and public market comparators in accordance with International Private Equity and Venture Capital guidelines.

The outcome of the valuations committee will be then subject to further review by the audit and risk committee and, in respect of the annual results, the Company’s external auditors.

Investors are increasingly relying on industry professionals such as financial advisers when making investment decisions, new research from Avaloq has revealed.

The study, conducted among 3,000 investors across six European and Asian markets, found that more than half (53%) of investors consult industry professionals when making investment decisions, a figure that has risen by nine percentage points since 2022.

Professionals are the go-to source for investment advice, followed by news articles (cited by 46%, up 3 percentage points since 2022).

Meanwhile, investors are less likely to look to their friends and family when deciding how and what to invest in, with just a third (33%) relying on them for advice (compared to 35% in 2022).

The switch likely reflects the need for professional expertise, following a year of financial uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, energy crises and supply chain disruptions.

Against this backdrop, investors cited additional income (50%) and retirement planning (43%) as the top factors driving them to invest.

This was particularly notable among European investors, where the percentage of individuals investing for additional income (51%) has increased by 16 percentage points since 2022.

Committing to the state pension triple lock has topped a list of pension policies or reforms that UK adults are most in favour of, new research by My Pension Expert has found.

The at-retirement adviser commissioned an independent survey of 2,000 UK, asking all those with a pension to select their top three most desired pension-related policies from a list of ten (full results below).

It found that ‘committing to the triple lock’ was the most popular, with 36% of people putting this in their top three picks.

Second was ‘outlining measures to protect UK pension schemes from economic volatility’ (23% had this in their top three).

Joint third were ‘increasing the amount you can contribute to your pension pot each year while still receiving tax benefits from doing so’ and ‘making new legislation to make it quicker and easier to transfer pensions between providers’. Both were selected by 20% of respondents.

My Pension Expert’s own analysis of 3,953 pension transfers that it managed on behalf of clients during the 2022/23 financial year revealed that, on average, it took 29 days for ceding companies to move the money.

After these ‘implementing reforms to increase transparency around pension regulations’ (19%) and ‘fast-tracking the implementation of the government’s pension dashboard’ (18%) were the next most popular policies picked.

ESG ratings: whose interests do they serve? (Financial Times)

Banks behind 70% jump in greenwashing incidents in 2023 (Reuters)

Can AI beat the market? Wall Street is desperate to try (Bloomberg)

Did You See?

Darius McDermot – managing director at Chelsea Financial Services & FundCalibre – believes UK equities are finally more compelling than contentious.

“Whisper it quietly but the UK economy has been showing signs of resiliency in recent months, as it continues to fight off a series of short- and long-term headwinds which dominate the news,” he writes for Money Marketing.

“Nominal growth of 0.2% in the second quarter of 2023 beat consensus expectations, with services, construction and industrial production all generating positive growth.

“Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has also reversed its view that the economy would enter recession this year.”