Good morning and welcome to your Morning Briefing for Friday 7 March 2025. To get this in your inbox every morning click here.
FCA urges vulnerable clients to open up to financial services firms
Only 40% of vulnerable customers disclose their needs to their financial services provider, according to the Financial Conduct Authority.
However, the ones that do open up tend to have better experiences.
The FCA found that 74% of vulnerable customers who told their firm about their circumstances said staff asked the right questions to understand their situation.
Over half (57%) said their firm ‘cared’, while 58% said it took action to provide the support they needed.
Royal London customers to share £181m payout as profits jump
Customers of Royal London will share in a payout of £181m in April after the mutual sees an 11% increase in operating profit in 2024.
An estimated 2.3 million eligible customers who have pensions and life policies with Royal London will benefit from the payout as part of its profit share scheme.
Royal London made pretax profits of £277m in the year to 31 December 2024, up from £249m a year earlier.
Barry O’Dwyer, group chief executive, said the business “is customer-owned and is run for the benefit of customers, not shareholders.”
What International Women’s Day should teach us about wealth transfer
We are approaching another International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8, and the theme for this year is ‘Accelerate Action’. So, the exam question is: what should that look like, and can we make a difference?
I recently reflected on this while taking my widowed mother for a coffee in M&S on a Saturday morning, writes Gillian Hepburn, commercial director at Benchmark.
The cafe was probably 80% women, with a significant demographic over the age of 65. While I’m not suggesting they were all widows, a generous proportion probably were, given that the average age of widowhood in the UK is 73.
Quote Of The Day
A quick browse of daily headlines makes clear that will see we are in a world of elevated risk, volatility and uncertainty
– Ryan McNelley, managing director and EMEA portfolio valuation leader at Kroll, comments on FCA’s warning on private markets valuations
Stat Attack
New research from IG Prime, the prime broker for hedge funds, suggests that 2024 and 2025 could see a turnaround in the sector after years of weak relative performance and sluggish growth in assets under management. Research findings show
76%
of hedge fund clients polled said that they will stay with their current fund in 2025, with
24%
of clients expecting to change their hedge fund in 2025.
42%
of those looking to change their hedge fund manager said they would move to a smaller manager, while just
25%
planned to seek a larger hedge fund manager.
42%
of investors looking to change their hedge fund cited poor performance, and
58%
raised concerns over risk management. The report also shows
72%
of hedge fund clients expect returns over 5% in 2025, and
41%
expect more than 10%. Just
12%
of clients expect to make a loss on their hedge fund investments this year.
Source: IG Prime
In Other News
Target Group has announced it has achieved gender pay parity across its senior leadership team, as well as reducing its overall gender pay gap across the business.
The Newport-based firm has three women sitting on its executive committee.
Across all senior management, Target has increased female representation from 30% in 2020, to 41% today.
In addition, Target has announced its mean gender pay gap is 19.58%, a 9% reduction on the previous year and the lowest it has ever reported. This figure puts Target well below the finance and insurance industry average of 29.70% and highlights its longstanding commitment to pay equity.
In terms of the median pay gap, this sits at 19.70% which is also considerably lower than the finance and insurance industry average of 30.50%.
Work continues to not just reduce the pay gap, but to advance equality and to attract and retain female talent. Across the business, Target remains committed to reducing its gender pay gap year on year, with a view to close it by 2030.
Zurich Retail Protection has partnered with its UK charity partner, Magic Breakfast, to provide breakfasts to children in the UK.
For every response received to a transactional Net Promoter Survey (tNPS), the insurer will donate a breakfast. This ensures a hungry child is fuelled for learning, helping them concentrate and preventing morning hunger from being a barrier to learning.
Last year, Zurich Retail Protection issued more than 57,000 tNPS, of which 42,000 were sent to financial advisers.
The initiative was initially piloted through Zurich’s SME team in February 2024. Over the last 12 months, more than 50,000 Magic Breakfasts have been donated to support the health and learning of children.
China blasts Trump’s ‘two-faced acts’, calls US tariffs ‘evil’ (Bloomberg)
Top pension funds refuse to back defence industry (The Telegraph)
Home buyers race to beat stamp duty rise (BBC News)
Did You See?
You’ve certainly heard about the great wealth transfer. But did you realise that wealth is rapidly shifting into the hands of women?
Women are living longer and therefore set to inherit more, writes Heather Hopkins, MD and founder of Next Wealth.
The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) once predicted that by this year women would control as much as 60% of the UK’s wealth. And that direction of travel is likely to continue over the next decade.
We are earning more. We are investing smarter. And increasingly, we are holding the purse strings. The gender gap on all things financial is closing.
Data from Hargreaves Lansdown indicate that 87% of women believe they are now more likely to have their own money to invest than the generations before them. But the data also show that they favour Cash Isas, as they seek to avoid risk.
These women have both the means and the inclination to invest. And they would undoubtedly benefit from a guiding hand steering them towards taking an appropriately positioned, higher level of risk.
