News & updates
News & Updates
Investing to secure defined outcomes
Final-salary pension transfers tell us a lot about the wider need for customised investment solutions, goal-based and outcomes-driven, to replace standardised portfolio types. Failure of conventional solutions Defined Benefit (DB) transfers, where a known, secure real...
Back to the old normal: the Fowler Drew model in a post-QE world
Clients tend to view the value of the proprietary Fowler Drew modelling as a function of the stage they are at in life, rather than whether the economic or capital-market context is one that makes decisions easier or harder. As model builders, we know that the context...
Managing risk with risk-free assets
Bonds, supposedly the risk-reducing asset in conventional portfolio management, have suffered large losses this year. It is clearer than ever that the retail investment industry needs a new approach to managing risk. In this article we explain how Fowler Drew uses...
Calculating DB transfer redress
The FCA has consulted (CP22/15) on its detailed proposals for calculating consumer redress in cases where BSPS advice was found to be unsuitable, whether by FOS itself or independent assessors approved by the FCA. This follows an earlier consultation (CP22/6), still...
Picking the picker who picks the stockpicker
How do you explain to private clients that picking active fund managers in equity markets, or picking advisers who do, is a near-certain route to wealth destruction? Just show how many things have to go right for the extra costs and risks to be rewarded with a better...
FOI response from FCA in relation to Grant Thornton
We received the following information (30th May) in response to my FOI request concerning the FCA's processes for DB-transfer file assessment and the extent of its reliance on a single third party, Grant Thornton. The relevance of the questions to the proposed British...
Challenging the lawfulness of the British Steel redress scheme
I have covered in three recent articles the work we have done in addressing the FCA's proposals to introduce a redress scheme affecting everyone who advised any member of the closed BSPS Defined Benefit pension scheme to transfer out to a personal pension arrangement....
FCA publishes BSPS redress consultation
Since I had written extensively about the feasibility of a redress scheme to cover advice to members of the British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS), I want to comment briefly (even if too quickly) on the consultation paper published today by the FCA. I had set out in my...
Economic exclusion as a force for peace
Russia's war has surely changed many things, even before it is over. One is counter intuitive: it has made the powerless feel some sense of power, through collective action. I am talking not about governments but ordinary people. It turns out we hold the keys to...
Fowler Drew differs from typical investment firms who seek ‘alpha’ for alpha’s sake, instead harvesting low-cost ‘beta’, building towards target outcomes that clients get to define. Their assumptions about how markets behave seem sensible and plausible to this non-expert client. The focus on outcomes helps us to understand what we are doing and why. It’s self-contained, neat and tidy and very suitable for busy lives.