Good morning and welcome to your Morning Briefing for Monday 17 November 2025. To get this in your inbox every morning click here.
Adviser platforms assets hit record levels in Q3
Adviser platforms assets hit record levels in Q3 (£756bn) with the help of buoyant tech stocks and interest rates continuing their downward trend.
This is according to data from Fundscape, which found flows held up well despite lingering uncertainty ahead of the Autumn Budget.
Targeted support and consumer duty are ‘intertwined’
Both targeted support and consumer duty are so “intertwined it is hard to imagine one without the other”.
This is what Hargreaves Lansdown head of targeted support Nathan Long told Money Marketing.
What Black Friday can teach advisers
Everywhere you look, it’s the same show: banners shouting “unmissable offers”, countdown clocks ticking down the seconds, and bright red “last chance” stickers promising salvation through savings, writes Aegon head of Money:Mindshift Dr Tom Mathar.
It’s the time of year when reason briefly takes a holiday and the shopping baskets fill themselves. Many of the offers are tempting, aren’t they?
But as Greg Davies, specialist in applied behavioural finance and decision science at Oxford Risk, said when he joined me on the Money:Mindshift podcast:
“Black Friday is a theatre. Suddenly, that decision is put on stage, and it’s surrounded by lights and music and excitement… The same decision taken out of a boring context and put into that theatre leaves you to be a very different person.”
Quote Of The Day
Budget expectations are likely to continue to dominate market news this week. Last Friday we saw housebuilder Taylor Wimpey report that purchases had been put off until buyers had policy clarity, and this morning figures from Rightmove revealed the average new seller asking price fell by 1.8% in November
– Hargreaves Lansdown chief investment strategist Emma Wall on the impacts of the upcoming Budget on 26 November
Research from Standard Life’s Retirement Voice report has found that UK adults are prioritising short-term enjoyment over long-term financial security.
28%
of UK adults said they prefer to live for today than plan for the future.
40%
said managing day-to-day finances is the top priority.
31%
said the same for saving for holidays.
15%
said contributing to their pension is one of their top financial priorities.
35%
recognise that they may not be saving enough for retirement, but 45% still believe they are on track.
Source: Standard Life
In Other News
Dimensional Fund Advisors, the largest active ETF manager in the US has listed its first active European ETFs on the London Stock Exchange and Xetra in Frankfurt.
The Global Core Equity UCITS ETF and the Global Targeted Value UCITS ETF are listed in GBP and USD in London, and EUR in Frankfurt. Both funds are registered in Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK.
Dimensional Fund Advisors Co-CEO Nathan Lacaze said: “Dimensional has quickly established itself as a leading global active ETF issuer. These first two European listings provide a new opportunity for investors to experience Dimensional investing, with its Nobel Prize-winning insights and decades of expertise working to outperform benchmarks and peers.”
Dimensional is a global asset manager with $915bn in assets under management. The firm has experience managing active ETFs in the US and Australia, with ETF assets over $226bn across more than 40 funds.
Dimensional primarily serves investors who access the firm’s funds through financial advisers, intermediaries, and institutions.
China escalates Japan spat with threats of economic reprisal (Bloomberg)
Stocks cautious as Nvidia earnings test looms (Reuters)
Goldman Sachs on brink of best M&A performance in 24 years (Financial Times)
Did You See?
Quilter has announced that its WealthSelect Managed Portfolio Service (MPS) is now available on the Transact platform.
WealthSelect was first added to third-party adviser platforms in early 2024 and this latest development means advisers can choose the MPS on six of them, as well as on Quilter’s own investment platform.
Quilter said this expansion “reinforces its commitment to providing advisers with greater flexibility and choice to meet diverse client needs”.
WealthSelect was launched in 2014 and is managed by Stuart Clark, Helen Bradshaw and Bethan Dixon.
It has £23.3bn in assets under management and a suite of 56 portfolios offering different risk options, including responsible and sustainable products.
In March 2025, WealthSelect received three awards from Defaqto.
