Good morning and welcome to your Morning Briefing for Monday 23 October 2023. To get this in your inbox every morning click here.
Former EQ boss launches planning firm
Former EQ Investors joint chief executive Mark Howlett has launched his own financial planning firm with the acquisition of Yorkshire-based Ebor Financial Planning, Money Marketing can exclusively reveal.
The new firm – Liberate Wealth – will offer a “comprehensive suite” of financial planning and investment management services for every generation of investor on a nationwide basis.
Consumer Duty ‘born out of Covid’
Dynamic Planner proposition director Chris Jones believes the Consumer Duty was “born out of Covid”.
He told reporter Darius McQuaid that, prior to the roll out of the duty, the Financial Conduct Authority was more focused on tackling financial mis-selling and customers not receiving the right advice.
However, he said the pandemic showed that financial advisers possessed a duty of care towards their clients.
Is AI the solution to lack of trust?
One of the unfortunate things financial advisers and journalists have in common is belonging to a profession many people do not trust, writes Amanda Newman Smith.
For advisers, she says, this means any prospective client who has had no previous contact with the advice sector may have only a poor reputation, rooted in the past, on which to base their opinion.
However, things are changing for an industry that, historically, has been slow to move with the times.
In Conversation With Niki Cooke
Tune in to “In Conversation With” hosted by Kimberley Dondo, featuring Niki Cooke, CRO at Protection Guru. Discover Niki’s journey and the significance of her Women In Protection award.
Explore how major life events like divorce impact financial well-being and the role of protection coverage. Learn about common misconceptions and ways advisers can help.
Niki delves into the impact of menopause and the importance of raising awareness. Uncover proactive strategies for advisers and future trends in financial protection. Listen now:
Quote Of The Day
It’s turning out to be a dismal session with a rising pressure cooker of concern about the impact of high interest rates and geo-political turmoil.
– Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, comments on the fact the pound has fallen to the weakest level against the euro in 5 months after retail sales slump
Stat Attack
LSEG’s UK ETF market report for September 2023 found that…
£916bn
Value of all ETFs listed on the London Stock Exchange, as of September 2023
£3.81bn
September flows for the best-selling classification – Equity US
6.44%
Proportion of ETF flows accounted for by active vehicles
12.63%
This was down on July’s figure
£6.69bn
Total estimated net flows for the month
£8.03bn
Average turnover of ETFs on the LSE— or 10.03% of total turnover
£1.63bn
Net ETF flows going to DWS
Source: LSEG
In Other News
Principal Asset Management has announced it executed the final close of its closed-end fund dedicated to acquiring data centre assets in Europe on 11 August.
The capital raise for the Principal European Data Centre fund reached €297m. Subscriptions were received from 14 investors, including wealth managers, pension funds, and insurance companies located in Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and the US.
The fund focuses on manage-to-core data centre assets. At least 60% of the fund is allocated to the core European markets of Germany, Netherlands, France, United Kingdom, and Ireland, with up to 40% in secondary markets such as Spain, Italy, and Switzerland.
To date, the fund has acquired five assets, located in Barcelona; the UK; Amsterdam; Dublin and Frankfurt.
Principal Real Estate has global expertise investing in data centres and closed its first closed-end data centre fund in the United States in June 2021, which was oversubscribed at €471.4m.
Since entering the data centre market in 2007, Principal Real Estate has committed over €1.75bn in data centre acquisitions and developments and owns more than €1.18bn in data centre REITs.
DWS is expanding its range of dividend products with four new Xtrackers ETFs.
The listed index funds enable investors to focus on high-dividend stocks in three regions – the US, Europe and the euro zone – as well as globally.
At the same time, they meet certain sustainability criteria of the index provider MSCI. Specifically, they track different variants of the MSCI High Dividend Yield Low Carbon SRI Screened Select index series.
This was constructed with the help of an optimisation process in such a way that the often conflicting objectives such as dividend yield, mapping of market development and consideration of ESG criteria can be effectively reconciled.
The four new Xtrackers MSCI High Dividend Yield ESG UCITS ETFs were listed on Deutsche Börse on 11 October.
The ETFs covering the US and global equity markets, were additionally listed on the London Stock Exchange on 20 October.
Tougher UK crypto regime sparks boom for compliance advisers (Financial Times)
Customers of Deutsche Bank units lodge surge in complaints, consumer group says (Reuters)
Central banks search for lessons from the great inflation outbreak (Bloomberg)
Did You See?
We asked some advice professionals attending our flagship event – Money Marketing Interactive – last week whether they consider technology to be a threat or an opportunity to their business.
The answer was resoundingly “opportunity”, although some warned that it could be a threat to certain branches of the profession.
Find out what others had to say, as well as catching up on the highlights from the event, here:
If you attended the event and loved it as much as we did, or if you were not there and have FOMO, make sure you register your interest for Money Marketing Interactive 2024 here.
