58 - CUC: Completely Unnecessary Complications

In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

• Topical Titbits including HUM recap, Canada Life adviser resources, risk tolerances don’t change over time, crypto update (stay awake), Budget ripples and financial planning, new Irish health insurere, Labour to back FOS over charging vexatious claims, Canada Life 100+ resources, Sam Altman interviewed by Nicolai Tangen, the world’s most transparent fund, Fundsmith AGM, cash on platforms (again) 
• Meat and Potatoes: Completely Unnecessary Complications (CUC)
• TRAPist question(s) from www.twitter.com/arongunningham  https://www.linkedin.com/in/arongunningham/ and “K Pennypacker”
• Culture Corner

Show links: http://tiny.cc/traplinks

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:08

Music, welcome to the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, trap. Please follow us and join in the conversation on Twitter at advisor podcast, where you can suggest ideas and themes you'd like the trap team to discuss. Also remember to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and leave a six out of five star review on iTunes. Doing all this really, really helps us, which means we can do more to help you. Now, let's head over to the studio for the latest pile of trap you music,

Nick Lincoln: 0:44

yes, indeed, dear TRAPPIST, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 58 of the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, trap. My name is Lincoln, and joining me, as ever in the digital studio of doom, are the three other members of the trap back the three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Carl delachi, the voice widget. Alan the storyteller, Smith and and the ultra heart. Now, gentlemen, we have a show packed full of app, absolutely nothing, so let's start packing it straight away with some more high energy review reads, read out by my very good friend, the right honorable Mr. Andrew Hart.

Andy Hart: 1:24

Thank you very much. Nicholas, the first review is from Bob W N entitled, thank you. Great podcast. Five stars on the whole great podcast, which has been great for our profession. I wonder if the format could be tweaked with the occasional guests coming on after 50 odd episodes, content is still decent and relevant. Next is j m from Wan bruh, mandatory listing five stars. I'm 38 years into this profession and 16 years as an owner advisor. I love this podcast, topical, relevant and straight talking. Laugh Out Loud, funny at times. It's a serious podcast. If you care about our profession, I must listen. Thanks, chaps. Back to you boss. Great

Nick Lincoln: 2:04

stuff. Thank you TRAPPIST for those reviews. They give us a shot in the arm. And as to the first review, yeah, good point. We did have our first guest on last the last episode 57 James shack, trademark, James shackle, to give him his correct name, and that went over very well. So we hope, we hope we give James the boost he needs to get his YouTube channel off the ground. Okay, let's move on. And

Alan Smith: 2:22

anyone's got any, any suggestions for great guests who think we'd add value to the the audience, please do get in touch with Lincoln,

Andy Hart: 2:33

yeah, well, ABC, ABC

Nick Lincoln: 2:37

always be close. Okay, let's put some, let's, let's put a time stamp on this episode with some topical tit bits, stuff that's going on in this thing of ours. Now, Andrew, you had some sort of shindig recently, some conference. Yes,

Andy Hart: 2:50

the UK's premier financial planning conference. He was under management London. Was two weeks ago. Two of you boys attended, obviously, Carl, it's a big effort, but he's been there before, yeah. Firstly, massive. Thank you to all the delegates for coming. I sold about 333, 40 tickets in total, a couple of drop offs, but the room was absolutely packed. So far. The score for the rate the conference out of 10 is 8.8 so very high. Very pleased with that. And the average speaker scores are coming in that 8.36 the top speaker was David swannick from dimensional fund advisors. Who you few of you may know listen to this. He got 9.2 Yeah, good vibe. No strikes. Everyone was on a good form. Yeah, couldn't have asked them all. So yeah, over to you boys who are who attended? Well, Alan attended properly, Nick. Nick. Nick showed his face as it were. Went to the pub and ready. He was he

Alan Smith: 3:44

was there for most you were there for the morning, Nick, weren't you most of the morning, he was there. He

Andy Hart: 3:50

was there. He was there. Yeah, yeah. I can't spirit anyway. Thoughts on the conference guys.

Alan Smith: 3:58

If he's there in spirits, it was, it was good. Andrew, I gather you're going for a bigger venue next year. Yes to demand,

Andy Hart: 4:07

yes. So three sorry, yeah, 300 this year. Next year, it's going to be 450

Alan Smith: 4:13

Very good. Well done. It was a good day.

Andy Hart: 4:15

Thank you. Yes, it

Nick Lincoln: 4:16

was a good vibe. We met some lovely TRAPPIST there as well. That was nice. They were very kind to us,

Andy Hart: 4:20

you made it to the Indian restaurant, didn't you? Nick, just, just, just

Nick Lincoln: 4:26

about, I was running on fumes by then. Yeah, okay, right. So let's move on. So what's the next thing? Okay, on the docket, as as Calacanis says, and that rip off show that copies us. Risk tolerance remains static over time. Okay, this is me. So this is an article in morning. Article in Morningstar. Morning stars, I said before they do show notes with good stuff, and there'll be a link to this in the circle show notes. The article is entitled, does risk tolerance? Sorry, just tolerance for risk change in retirement, and it's an American all threats. But she writes on the first paragraph A recent review of income, sorry, a recent review. Of retirement income advice by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority found no difference in how most firms handle risk profiling between the accumulation and decum decumulation stages. Well, that's good news, because I'm sure the four of us are pretty much agreed on this, that you shouldn't really change the retirement income advice from the accumulation to the decumulation from the saving to the spending stage. And then scrolling down the article, there's a there's a brilliant graph, because Morningstar have their own risk assessment questionnaire, their own mumbo jumbo questionnaire, and they've got 1000s and 1000s of responses building up in this thing over time. And there's this graph showing how people's risk tolerance remains the same over time. And behind it is the S, p5, 100 from January, 2008 to now. And of course, the whole you know, that was the financial crisis, everything you know, the the Wuhan lab leak, bed wetting, the inflation, the inflation scare, the markets going up and down, but the average score is just almost a flat line. So it just proves that risk tolerance is kind of an immutable characteristic that doesn't really change over time. So it doesn't make you wonder why certain firms, I think they prescribe their advice is to do the risk assessment questionnaire every year with their clients, and they also try and badge it as a value add. What do you think, gents,

Carl Widger: 6:14

well, I think, I think doing it every year is pretty pointless exercise. Nick and you know, risk tolerance, you know, should be done as part of a compliance measure, as part of the financial plan. However, there are, there are some regulations there that you do need to update it, especially if you're doing, you know, new investments, or new pension top ups, that kind of stuff. So I guess for regulation purposes, there's going to be this just has to be done. And I think if you're doing rock solid financial planning, long term financial planning, you can have grown up conversations with your clients about it, and I suppose, coach them, mentor them, educate them through through the through the entire process. So yeah, pretty pointless doing it year on year. But I think for regulation purposes, you're going to have to have your file updated along the way.

Andy Hart: 7:09

Yeah, our regulation is requiring it yearly. Now, again, they're quite loose on the language they use, but discussed, are they right? Yeah, yeah, that's

Alan Smith: 7:19

part of your annual review, letter, whatever, just check. But it might just be, has anything changed? So nothing it depends on, certainly, certainly, certainly, life. Life events may have an impact. Let's say you lost a spouse or something material. You got you lost your job, you got divorced. I agree with you. Nick the fundamental kind of philosophy, tolerance. Thing doesn't really change much, but it's almost just a check in with a client. Is not it's not the end of the world just to check there. I think the more interesting point there is the pre and post retirement investment philosophy. I've seen so many things about this in the last couple of years that you there's, there seems to be sort of underlying expectation that you change your investment strategy or philosophy post retirement, which I think is a nonsense. You may well change the strategy and the planning around it, and the kind of, yeah, if you know you are now in drawdown, you're taking income, and all the various things that's that's reasonable, but the underlying investment strategy doesn't change ever. I don't think, yeah,

Carl Widger: 8:24

I will talk a little bit more about this in the meat and potatoes today, Alan, because that's, that's a that's a massive point. It doesn't, and shouldn't change, especially with them. I know you've you guys have got pension freedoms over there now, and we, you know. So you, the vast majority people, if you're doing well, okay, but if you are doing rock solid financial planning, as I say, you know, you're, you're it's just, it's a, it's a reviewable process every year. And that does not mean that your investment philosophy should change and and certainly for the higher net worth clients, you can demonstrate very clearly in financial planning, through cash flow modeling that they're going to be 50 year investors. That's what should dictate. What your investment philosophy is, not that you've now retired or semi retired, or whatever. It's a nonsense, a total nonsense.

Nick Lincoln: 9:17

Okay, well, that's what I just want to ask. I just

Alan Smith: 9:22

wanted to just, just add to that. And we've we this comes up from time to time. And in summary, this, this conversation represents our understanding of real financial planning, and some of the stuff I read confirms industry commentators, if you like, other people's misunderstanding. Because I keep seeing this thing come coming up. Yeah, Carl, they were just people aren't investing for 30 years or 50 years. People are now in retirement. They need their money next year and the year after. And we said, of course, they do. Hence the kind of core philosophy of real financial planning, which manages income, expenditure, caps, CAPEX expenditure, all that stuff that. The essence of it. That's why it's a highly personalized process and experience. And anyone who says, you know, my clients will need the money within the next five years, therefore we've got a different investment strategy, clearly doesn't understand the core aspects of financial

Nick Lincoln: 10:14

planning. I would agree with that. Okay, thank you, gentlemen. Voice crypto, go on, have at it.

Carl Widger: 10:24

Well, I just thought, you know, we should mention the fact that markets, Trump was elected, markets are at all time highs. Crypto is an all time high, and inevitably, then you'll get questions from clients. Oh, well, maybe I should kind of hold off and wait for a correction and then go in. So I Yeah, but, but, look, I do you know what? We know that that's the, you know, when is the best time to invest is, you know, if not five years ago, it's today, right? But having said that, from a client's point of view, it's a valid question. It really is. So it's how you deal with those questions and how you deal with those concerns. And I came across a video from Charlie Bill ello and Peter maluc. We've mentioned both before, by the way, Charlie below is, I think I'm pronouncing his surname, right, B, I, L, E, L, L, O, is definitely worth following. He puts up some really brilliant content, but the conversation was kind of about right Trump's in. So what can we expect? And there was some stuff about tariffs and that kind of stuff in the first part of the podcast, but Peter Malou kind of wraps it up at the end, and it gives kind of a nice summary as to, you know why you should be investing now. And he just makes one comment towards the end, you know, if you think that the price of everything is going to increase over the next five to 10 years, you need to be invested in an equity portfolio. And I thought it was a beautiful little summary as how, you know you can help your clients make those decisions, because people will be nervous that, well, if things are at an all time high, there's only one way they can go, and really it's up to us to coach them through. You know, well, you know, history tells us, if you take a medium to long term view, you know, the trend is upwards, therefore you should be invested. And then you look out the window and do nothing so interesting. I shared The below video because, because I thought that was interesting, but also just to remind me to just share with everybody that Charlie below is definitely worth following if you're not already,

Alan Smith: 12:34

there's quite a lot of data out there about historically, had you invested at market, all time high. I'm talking about things like, you know, equity markets, s, p, etc, and the the experience of anyone who's done that in times and in years gone by. You know, if you take a medium to long term view, has always been positive. Pretty much the vast majority of time has always been positive. It's never the right time, other than now. But your other point about Bitcoin again every time it reaches the market high, you know, people start talking about it again and wish they'd invested before and didn't, and then you wait for a market correction, which may or may not happen. I'm still of the philosophy that in your investment playpen, it's not the end of the world to have a small allocation towards something like that, like, like it might be to a tech startup or any other number of things, the kind of money you can afford to lose, just as a bit of a pump, not the end of the world to

Carl Widger: 13:27

have that. Yeah, I would agree. Good points. Good

Nick Lincoln: 13:29

point. Excellent stuff. Okay, who's next? It is me. Okay, so, yeah, the budget, our budget, the changes to pensions, we're still as an advisory community, feeling our way through this, I think, and there's a heck of a lot of uncertainty, and it's not sitting well on our shoulders, I think, because, and this is, again, a stereotype, but broadly the advisor personality, I think we kind of can do people who like to go to our clients with solutions. This is what we can do, take my advice and just do it. But at the minute, we're in this kind of holding pattern with pensions. We got this consultation phase through to next January. It's not coming in until April, 2027 I was speaking to advisors at hum Andy about this, and they're all thinking, you know, what are we telling our clients? And so forth, so we're just kind of working through the ramifications. But I just did a this, a real life client, a husband and wife, and he's taking, he's got income, state income, and then an annuity income of about 25k a year, gross. And so I just looked at it on on voyeur, what if we take out and he's got a pension part that he's not touched because he wanted to pass it down to his children for him, inheritance tax? Well, that's gone now. So we thought, Okay, what if we just take out 25k a year gross. That takes him up to the 50k band. So he only paid 20k 20% tax on on that 25,000 pounds, and he can either gift it away to the children. Get it outside of the estate. Get the seven year clock ticket. But it's not even the seven year clock, because income payments from fad, from flex access, draw down regular income payments. You can gift them away to the children, and they're treated as income. You've given out taxable income, and they fall immediately outside of the estate. So that's one thing you could just start doing. But the other thing i. Looked at as well, was okay that if he takes 25k a year, gross, that's, that's 20k I think, net, or 1700 pounds a month. Net, you put that into a joint life, whole of death. And it's amazing, actually, how much, theoretically, you can get for this. I mean, there's this, there's 71 next

Alan Smith: 15:13

hall of death, whole of life.

Nick Lincoln: 15:16

Sorry, hold of death. This, this bizarre thing in life, when you go to when you go to when you meet somebody, and you're just chatting with me, say, by the way, how old are you there? They said, Well, I'm 70 years old. But when you entered Life Assurance, world said something, how old are you go, Well, I'm 71 next birthday. Who talks like that? But in life assurance, they do. And this couple, who are both going to be 71 next birthday, 1700 pounds a month, theoretically buys them a joint life, second death, whole of life. Policy guaranteed premiums of just under a million quid. Now it's a heck of a hassle to get these parties on the books, because joint life second death are for a certain demographic, age demographic, and they're normally higher sums assured. So you're looking at Mars mes question after questionnaire, but just a thought, they create a million prepaid Trust Fund of a million quid, taking the income from your pension pot, paying 20% tax, and it's the gifts are straight outside of your estate as well. So just, just just playing around with things that and you could, yeah,

Alan Smith: 16:07

I think these, I think it's all of life, joint life, second death, are going to be back in vogue again. People used to do a lot of them. And obviously when,

Nick Lincoln: 16:18

yeah, in the bad old days, the Wild West days, it was, it was like whole of life written on a maxi cover basis, you know. And after 10 years, you know, basically the client was stuffed, and the premium would just go up and up and up. But this guaranteed premium, I mean, the caveat is, of course, you got to only get any value when you die. You've got to keep these things going through to second death. There's never any cash in value if the client's happy with that. And you get a letter signed from the client saying that, yes, we understand this Nick. And you put that on file with the suitability letter. I think, I think you know that's, there's going to be a need, there's going to be a call them in this new in this new world, Royal

Carl Widger: 16:50

London. Have a really cool version of that product here in Ireland, whereby it is joint life second death life policy. It's under Section 72 so it's to pay inheritance tax. But because the experience is a lot of the time that you got to either keep paying or it's you've wasted your money. They've they've brought in these kind of there's three options, after you've paid the premiums for 15 years, where you can market kind of paid up with a much reduced level of cover. You can withdraw some of your money. You can you can say, I want money back. So basically it'll be about 70% of the money that you paid in. So kind of 30% was paying for the life insurance bit. You can get 70% back. Or alternatively, you can just keep going. And I think that's a really nice way of being able to, you know, say that, you know, from an advisory point of view, if, if legislation changes, or something changes down the line, well, we do have a kind of an out, and you're now asking the client to sign up to say, I'm definitely going to pay for 15 full years, and that guarantees me this optionality. So, uh, interesting to see what, you know, I think Royal London, if you guys are facing this kind of stuff, you know, maybe they'll introduce that kind of a product in the UK, because I think we've certainly seen a big uptake in that over the last couple of years.

Andy Hart: 18:15

Couple of more points, relatively minor point you mentioned, Alan. It should be called death insurance. The person that called it life insurance is a marketing genius. I think they they talk about it quite a bit, ndrt and stuff, yeah, this, this bringing pensions into the inherited inheritance tax estate, especially for post 75 is an absolute the biggest change I've seen in financial planning point of view for the spending strategies. Now, there's no clear answer with clients. Every single client is going to be on an individual basis. We're gonna have to ask ridiculous questions like, what tax rate your grandkids pay? Just, just the the, the, it's a hyper complex problem now. And yeah, As Nick said, There is nothing now to go back to clients with, with clear answers. There's no rules of thumb, none of that. It's it's heavy financial plan in every single client. Yeah. Go on Nick, as

Nick Lincoln: 19:12

I said the last episode, if cash flow isn't front and center in your business now, by God, it better be it sleep at night without doing cash flow for every client in this new world where world where we're entering into I really just one quick thing. This is, this is a ticketing. If you don't know that's fine. Why have the light? Why have the pension providers got to pay the IHT is that's a real pain in the ass, bringing them into thing that they're bringing them into the whole probate business. And why? Why can't the pension funds be paid out to the estate, which then declares it on the form that you send off to HMRC, and they're the 40% that comes off. That

Andy Hart: 19:43

might be the case when it all comes in Nick who consultation.

Alan Smith: 19:47

It's, it's much easier for HMRC. If that happens, it's got a big institution. It's just person's dead paid the tax out. But actually, yeah, companies, I can't remember the

Andy Hart: 19:59

exact number. But some clients can be caught by like a 90, 92% tax people that residential, no rate band, and then it's just insane. What is going to come in down the line if this gets implemented, as per we think now, it's it's a total mess for financial planners. But as you say, and labor budget sort of the bad news for us personally, good news for us business wise. But it's going to be messy. The compliance point of view is also going to be a complete joke, because we're gonna have to do like, full advice for every single tiny withdrawal. It's gonna be, oh my god, I'm really not looking forward to it anyway. We will see,

Unknown: 20:36

right? Let's, let's, let's see. Let's

Nick Lincoln: 20:38

back up the moon. I'm sorry, that's my point, and I seem to brought nothing down. So Carl, give us a shot. Give us a shot in the arm. Give us some excitement. Give us some pep and burp. Talk about a new health insurance company? Yeah,

Carl Widger: 20:48

new private health insurance in Ireland, which is always I do love seeing this, because we suffer from a serious lack of competition across the board here. So level health have launched in Ireland, backed by Aviva, so they have the funding. So it seems they've launched with kind of four very kind of simple plans. It's absolutely brilliant, because the private health insurance market here, the premiums have just gone up and up and up and up. So look, it's a really welcome thing to see. And, yeah, I think that that there's maybe question marks about the culture, maybe in certainly, one of the providers here. So I think new provider in doing something new, keeping it simple, for sure, they won't be charging more, so that will drive premiums down. So it's really, really good expand

Andy Hart: 21:45

on this culture. Point car, what's

Unknown: 21:47

I want?

Alan Smith: 21:50

He's spoken to our legal department more than later,

Carl Widger: 21:57

and they'll also, they'll also see that I was deeply uncomfortable with the content of some of today's podcast, owing to the Irish versus UK cultural differences.

Andy Hart: 22:15

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Before we continue, it was a football game on yesterday, wasn't there? Carl, did you? Did you manage to catch it? Oh, God.

Alan Smith: 22:22

I it was on it was on Sunday, last Sunday. Last

Andy Hart: 22:26

Sunday. Yeah, last Sunday. Days ago.

Carl Widger: 22:28

Oh, that one where Ireland were totally screwed and should have had two penalties in the first half, absolute rock solid penalties. Yeah,

Unknown: 22:35

yeah, yeah, yeah,

Carl Widger: 22:36

I did. I didn't catch the second half, though, unfortunately,

Alan Smith: 22:38

was, was the best Irish bit on the pitch Declan rice,

Carl Widger: 22:44

I don't know. I don't even explain. I think. No, the two Irish men, Grealish and rice, were all injured. So they were England. That would be why your man, Morgan plays to the cricket team. Anyway. Go on. Let

Alan Smith: 22:57

me ask you a quick question on that and bringing the others as well. So, Carl, do you? Do you? Does your firm recommend health insurance for clients? Private Medical, no. Private Medical,

Carl Widger: 23:08

no, no, no, we don't. But it's like, obviously, something that all of our clients have. So, you know, it's important. So

Alan Smith: 23:15

what? What it's, it's, it's an issue for a lot of our clients, particularly as they get older. It's a classic sort of insurance, like most insurance, as as you get older, when you need it more, the costs go up, and they grow up quite significantly, and they go up way ahead of the prevailing rate of inflation, which is another thing. And I keep coming back to my point, your personal rate of inflation tends to be a lot different to the government's stated CPI. Oh yeah. And particularly for our clients, for the wealthy clients, for the who are aging. And it's so so we it's a regular point for us and for our clients, and it is an absolute minefield of, you know, understanding levels of cover and what's covered and what's not, yeah. So I don't know what you other guys do, but we outsource. We've got a really good firm that we just refer on to, I must say, they're called independent healthcare services, and they've been found, as you know, there's quite a few firms around who specialize in this, and that's all they do. And they're experts, and are kind of rearranging for group cover and everything else they're, you know, you know, we've had some great feedback from clients on that. So do you guys get involved or refer on. Nick, Andrew, just say, I don't do this. No, I refer.

Nick Lincoln: 24:27

I don't get asked. I don't get asked. So you

Alan Smith: 24:30

get asked if people have got their, you know, Bucha or AXA or something, and say, God, my premiums are doubling this year. Any thoughts? Nick, don't you don't get asked. It just, well, no, I say, I really know your response.

Carl Widger: 24:41

There's a website here, which I'm trying to remember, I think it's called insurance page, I QA or something like that. But there's a that might be incorrect, but, but you can kind of compare all of the plans in the market there. So you know

Alan Smith: 24:57

that's regularly. I

Nick Lincoln: 24:58

can say it's not that it shows. Like, car insurance, isn't it? There's so many variations. It's like, geez, comparing.

Andy Hart: 25:05

So yeah, I refer onto a firm that just does private medical insurance, and I get great feedback from clients. Yeah, I don't get involved myself.

Unknown: 25:15

Yeah, yeah, okay,

Nick Lincoln: 25:17

okay, well, that's a good move in the Irish market. Moving on to the next thing, ultra money visuals.

Andy Hart: 25:25

Okay, a couple of points packed into this. I don't know if we spoke about it before, but there's a company online or a business website in America called Money visuals, ran by a guy called Ashby Daniels, who's a close personal friend of mine. Money visuals is decent. He does sort of offers.

Carl Widger: 25:46

He's got an Advisor newsletter,

Andy Hart: 25:48

newsletter and a client newsletter. His latest one, I've got a link in the so called show notes, the rational investor edition number 41 he's also a massive fan of Howard Marks, who's we've spoken about here, oak tree capital, who does memos. But in there's a new book out. I believe it's a new book called The most important thing illuminated by Howard Marks. In it, he talks about volatility, and I'm going to very briefly mention a couple of words on that. So here's Howard Marks on why volatility is not risk. According to the academics who developed capital market theory, risk equals volatility because volatility indicates that unreliability of an investment. I take great issue with this definition of risk. It's my view that knowingly or unknowingly, academics settled on volatility as a proxy for risk as a matter of convenience. They needed a number of their calculations that was objective and could be ascertained historically and extrapolated into the future. Volatility fits the bill, and most of the other types of risk do not. And he goes on about various other things. So yeah, he's very eloquent about his disdain for risk being classified as volatility. But also, check out money visuals, which is a decent company, provide a lot of good stuff for advice.

Alan Smith: 27:04

You're mentioning them the quite the direct competition to Home Premium. Yeah,

Andy Hart: 27:08

they are. We run a very similar business. We provide content for advisors for a monthly fee. They

Alan Smith: 27:14

have the price, though, yeah, yeah, interesting. Well,

Andy Hart: 27:18

you get what you pay for. You know, you know the rules. But no, he's a decent guy, good friend of mine. I'm Ashby Daniels, so money visuals is decent, and I'm probably going to buy this new book and from how marks or maybe report back once I've read it. But yeah, I agree with all how Mark says about volatility not being the real risk. Back to you, boss.

Nick Lincoln: 27:38

Back to you, my friend. Labor backs Fox to me.

Andy Hart: 27:41

Okay, so labor is in consultation about potentially charging claims management companies a small fee to lodge complaints with the regulator, or sorry, the ombudsman, basically, the government has concerns. There are some professional representatives who are bringing significant numbers of poorly evidenced or templated responses to the ombudsman with no financial disincentive for doing so. So this is good news. Yeah, claims management companies just throw as much, you know, whatever, against the wall to try and get a couple of these claims to stick. So it's good that there's going to be a minimal fee. I think they're going to charge them, I think, 250 pounds a case. It's challenging for any ombudsman to lodge a fee against people complaining, but the same time, you know, sort of uphold standards within the industries. So, for example, they say that, let's say they're they, they're going for a 50,000 pounds claim from, you know, a water company, a telecom company, a financial advisor. Should there be a 5% if you lose this, you pay 5% of it, or 1% of it, or every failed claim, there's a 500 pound fee. I don't quite know it's a challenge for Ombudsman's.

Alan Smith: 28:59

Thing is the the ombudsman service, last time I heard is running at least a year behind with dealing with complaints so and so. They are the volume of complaints versus the resources they've got, and they've hired lots and lots of people over the last two or three years. It seems it's a no lose situation. You might not you might need to lose by sending a company, there's a lot of behavioral studies, so even if you put the slightest they make it 10 pounds a claim, or something like that, the numbers would decrease significantly. Yeah,

Andy Hart: 29:32

there should. There should be a sort of level of friction, and some

Alan Smith: 29:37

maybe you get it back if it's uphill. But of course, claims management companies, and they've sprung up all over the place. I mean, there's some

Andy Hart: 29:47

x they should introduce a charge for email. Every email is a 2p to send. Our email traffic will go down massively. Can't wait. Yeah, I've said that before. When I get to power, the day I get to power, emails will be charged at 2pm an email to. Yeah,

Nick Lincoln: 30:01

as well, if you've got it, if you got a claim going through, and say you're the advisor or the claimant, a year of that hanging over your life. I mean, you're just, you know what? I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's a lot of minutes, and

Alan Smith: 30:11

that's when you first get to look at it, gee, as far as get to look at it, and then you might ask for more information and get this, it could, it could last two years comfortably from the point of sending in a letter. So I think it's quite good. So I think that's I think it's good.

Andy Hart: 30:24

I'm sure the traffic, I think management companies will go down massively again. I don't know. I'm just picking around percentage, but probably way over 50% if they charge 250 pounds for a claim that's only going to pay them whatever anyway. Well, the

Alan Smith: 30:37

problem is, they'll pass it on to they'll pass it on to the clock, the customer. They'll say, in order for us to do this, just send us a check for shorty pounds or whatever. And it

Nick Lincoln: 30:44

will again, that'll cut down on the number of Yeah. They're called vexatious claims. Andrew, yes, and anything that cuts down on that kind of stuff will be well received

Andy Hart: 30:53

claims. Alan, okay,

Unknown: 30:58

okay, got it. Got it story.

Nick Lincoln: 31:02

You've been relatively mute so far. So now entertain us with some resources.

Alan Smith: 31:09

Just wanted to share this something I came across recently Canada life, they've got a whole thing. It's called the 100 plus hub. And the 100 refers to, you know, Centennial Sentinel. How do you say centenarians reach 100

Andy Hart: 31:23

centurions,

Alan Smith: 31:25

Centurions? No, it's not that I saw so gladiator too the other day. It's great film.

Carl Widger: 31:32

It's not It's terrible.

Alan Smith: 31:34

I think it's pretty good,

Nick Lincoln: 31:36

like men in law anyway,

Carl Widger: 31:39

sharks going around to the Coliseum. Are you joking? That's where they

Andy Hart: 31:43

used to do a big Rhino. Yeah.

Carl Widger: 31:45

Put Yeah, rhino in it. Yeah. Anyways, Gladiators,

Nick Lincoln: 31:49

the gladiators and Vaseline podcast. Let's move back to the right. So

Alan Smith: 31:55

bottom line is, people are living longer and longer. As we all know, calendar life have created. It's just a lovely hub with lots of information, with with graphs, charts, calculators, life expectancy calculators, tax calculators, pension calculators, infographics, stuff that you could use in client meetings. One interesting stat that comes from their research and their studies is people are getting older and where they go to seek advice from number one you might expect, family, then it's family, friends, the internet, Martin Lewis website is that is right up there, and ifas and advisors are way, way, way down the list. Again, as you might expect, interesting isn't as we know, there's still a very small percentage of, you know, customers, people, human beings in the UK, Ireland and around the world, who actually seek the advice of financial planners. I think you know, referring back to the earlier conversation about the increased complexity, particularly for these people as you know, the people that who are the focus of this, this content hub that Canada life have created, which is the more older people going through this normal kind of intergenerational planning, and what have you the I would like to see that number. Like to expect that that number of people who are seeking advice from advisors will increase, but it's a much lower number than anything else. And Martin Lewis is by far the most impactful. He's pretty good, I would say, overall, pretty accurate with his information, but it's generic. It's not advice, is it's generic information, and it's not specific to the circumstances. Anyway, there's a link to that Canada life thing in the show notes. I might lose

Andy Hart: 33:29

his website. It's a good starting point. You know, often find myself buried in some of the forums when I'm looking for something, something winner, wacky. He's definitely a consumer champion. He's done, you know, a lot of good with this well, but yeah, getting proper financial planning advice via the website, obviously is not gonna, not gonna cut it. Nicholas,

Nick Lincoln: 33:47

hoki, Doki de la Bucha, Norges investment bank,

Carl Widger: 33:54

yeah, we've mentioned this before. So Nikolai kangen is the host of the this particular podcast. And I came across, I don't know, I think it was watching something else. And then this came up. He interviews Sam Altman of chat, GPT open AI, and it's a really good interview in terms of kind of looking forward as to where this is going to bring us. And, you know, people being spooked by it. I think, watch this interview. I think it's, it's, it's really, really good. Interestingly. Andy, when I was going through the kind of back catalog of this, I think he does an interview with Howard Marks as well. How does he who you, who you just mentioned earlier on, yeah, but he just, he just has an amazing, I don't know, his just his interviewing skills. He like he doesn't. He's not afraid of pauses. Do you know so many people who are afraid of pauses and will jump in because Sam Altman isn't the most articulate, the most articulate guy in the world, but he just lets him think about his answers and and, you know, gives him the time. To give it, give the answers. I thought it was really, really good. And basically his view, of course, he is going to say it AI is good, but he's basically saying AI is not going to necessarily replace work. It's going to change work, but AI is going to be best for the less fortunate. Sorry. Nicholas,

Unknown: 35:18

no, no, no. I

Nick Lincoln: 35:18

just say Nikolai. Tangent. He is. He is an intriguing interview. And I'm wondering if it's because English is his second language and that just gives him a different way of just thinking and the pausing and what have you. He's an engaging interview.

Alan Smith: 35:32

He could, in theory, he can get anyone he wants on his podcast. You know? What have they got? Trillions of assets they own, every company I'd like, the CEO of whoever. Come on,

Carl Widger: 35:42

yeah, yeah. He had, he had Elon Musk as well, um, because, yeah, but that was a kind of a live on x in down with x. Anyway,

Andy Hart: 35:55

we've spoken about it before, but he also had Mike O'Leary on from Ryanair. That's, yeah, that

Nick Lincoln: 36:00

was a good one. Yeah, really brilliant. Andy, you've got a follow on point to Carl's. Yeah,

Andy Hart: 36:05

I've got a following point. Obviously, the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund that I've spoken about a bit and advisors know, the government pension fund in Norway, they had their quarterly results that came in. They just returned 75 billion in the last quarter. But my main point was they've been named the most transparent fund in the world, the most transparent sovereign wealth fund in the world. The score that they got out of 100 Guess what? It was?

Alan Smith: 36:36

90 904.

Unknown: 36:38

Perfect. I was in on 185

Andy Hart: 36:42

question checklist thing, whoever's whatever, the second place person fund was the Canadian, Canadian wellness that's sovereign wealth funds in Canada. So, yeah, it's and obviously Nicholas can't remember his surname. Is the tangent, is the is the CIO because Nikolai. Nikolai is

Nick Lincoln: 37:05

back, Norges, getting

Andy Hart: 37:07

transparent, amazing paid. He gets

Carl Widger: 37:10

paid something like 250 grand a year, as opposed to, you know, these hedge fund managers who are getting paid hundreds of millions a year. Yeah, and keeps the few times I've listened to him like, I love my job. I just want my job to go. I think,

Nick Lincoln: 37:24

yeah, he sounds the autistic. I

Andy Hart: 37:26

think it's 40 people in the office looking after this one. Yeah,

Alan Smith: 37:32

a truly, well, I think we'll come on to that to some degree in the meat potatoes, okay, the

Nick Lincoln: 37:38

world's most transparent fund. We're going to be talking about some of the world's most not ill, opaque, less better by Okay, talking for the world, the world's most transparent fund, we're going to talk about one of the world's most transparent fund managers, the ever direct. Was he a guest on your podcast, Andrew, I forget you talked through Terry

Andy Hart: 38:01

my podcast on the street. So now he's a close personal friend of mine.

Nick Lincoln: 38:07

Quick, quick.

Andy Hart: 38:11

Terry Smith is one of the, I think, best or well known active fund managers in the UK. He runs a fund called fund Smith, named after himself. He had his annual shareholders meeting, and they stream it live. I think this passed me by, but I watched it last week, the 2024 meeting. And he is smart, direct, well informed. Always talks about investing, as in investing in businesses and companies. You know, he's been, been sort of quoted as the UK is Warren Buffett, and he's got his Charlie Munger partner, who His name has alluded me now, but yeah, it's definitely worth watching it. So do check it out. And he talks about the return to the fund and what, what companies have added to the returns, what companies have detracted for the return So Terry Smith, fun Smith on YouTube. Link in the show notes, that's it. Did

Alan Smith: 39:06

he explain why he's underperformed the last five years? This is

Nick Lincoln: 39:10

coming. I knew this. I

Andy Hart: 39:12

don't quite know, but I think since inception, he's done very well.

Alan Smith: 39:16

It's done well.

Andy Hart: 39:17

I don't get too much into the weeds about that, because I'm not really too bothered about that. I'm more a fan of him, rather than the funding returns. And obviously I don't have any money in it. My clients have no money in it, but I'm a huge fan of him. And the way he talks, I agree. I agree.

Alan Smith: 39:30

He's very he's very straight talking. Yeah, he writes very well. It's the old

Nick Lincoln: 39:36

it's the old story. It's like Matt, you know, boy meets girl falls in love another bloke they you know, he becomes a trans person. You know, all these classic love stories do really well cash pause in they get after they've done well, really, really hard. It's really after done well, it's really, really hard. It's just rinse and repeat. You know, this is just the nature of active fund management.

Andy Hart: 39:58

But in terms of. The money that they're looking after. The funds only worth 25 billion. I mean, that's not a lot of capital to allocate these days, you know. But buffet Buffett has a little bit of a challenge with his hundreds of billions to allocate. But Terry Smith, I mean, even crap companies these days have got market caps of 5 billion. So, I mean, the amount of money swashing around there's, uh, insane. So he is restricted by their size. No, no,

Alan Smith: 40:25

I agree with you. He's great. I read most things that he publishes. I'll catch up with that video. I like I've watched him in the past. I like his straight talking. I like that. He's his, kind of, his own personal stories, a bit of a kind of East End boy done well, but, you know, very, very smart, but it is, but fundamentally, for a in the world that we live in, and there was always these times when, whether it's Lincoln train as the other one, Nick train, Terry Smith, and you know, throughout history, there are always out the the nature of market means there are funds that will out outperform everyone else, and they'll do it for quite a long period of time, but pretty much everything that I've seen eventually, it might be five years, might be seven years, might be 10 years. There's a reversion to mean, and you're still paying, I don't know what the fees are, but the chunky, you know, for the 1%

Carl Widger: 41:12

happy wood

Alan Smith: 41:14

ultimate of this stuff, there is this neon

Carl Widger: 41:18

Woodford. Neon Woodford, yeah, yeah.

Andy Hart: 41:22

He's just buying very well known public equity company. Yeah, they are moats, but yeah,

Alan Smith: 41:32

they've avoided a lot of the tech companies, which is one of the things they bought. So

Andy Hart: 41:36

their biggest, their biggest performing fund that they own is Microsoft, all right, yeah, they didn't buy

Alan Smith: 41:42

in video, for example. But so you get into the needs of someone's decision as to whether the owning this company is better than something else. But the data tells you that there's no underperform for several years, they might come back. But the point being, for 99% of people, you know, buying a, you know, a global equity diversified portfolio is likely to be bingo, more rewarding totally. But as we'll come on to it's a bit boring, right? Next.

Nick Lincoln: 42:08

Okay, good. Good discussion. Good back and forth. There, right. Last thing on the topical tip bit section, yes, I got an email from AJ Bell telling me that on, they've got various platforms, so I don't know quite which one this is, but on, maybe it's the same across all their platforms, they're paying cash of 2% Well, paying cash of 2% they haven't they've got advisor focused one they got the client. They're paying cash on their platform of 2% and Okay, fair enough. But transact paying 4.7% at least. They were in October. And this is things still this is massive disparity between the interest that is paid to the customer, the end customer, on these platforms. Now I know that AJ Bell, and I'm sure AJ Bell have cleared up their thing, and they now disclose the fact they keep some interest, whereas perhaps in the past, they didn't, but it does make me wonder about these you know, we all have to produce these illustrations for clients, and we will have to justify while we're switching platforms, and do product charge comparisons. If one platform is paying 2% cash and the other is paying 4.7% cash. It makes these illustrations a complete waste of time. You know and transact. Have done the numbers. The average client holding cash on their platform is about six and a half percent. That covers their costs. You're getting a free platform with them paying back that amount of cash, interest to their customers and interest rates, whatever they are now, four and a half percent. I don't really keep up with as much as that's that's UK. Long term historical trend is about four and a half percent. You're going to get a free platform with transact if you keep the average amount in cash. You know, again, all compliance culture we have,

Andy Hart: 43:33

they've been insanely transparent with this. They would have earned hundreds of millions if they were skimming off cash on the other platforms. Yeah. So congratulations to them that they can still run a very profitable business and not do this. It shows how efficient they are compared to the other platforms.

Alan Smith: 43:49

And to me, without getting too controversial, I think it tells you a lot about the culture of a business transact. Culture is good. It is very client focused, very advisor focused. Others may not be quite so much,

Nick Lincoln: 44:02

but if you just, just, just to one, if you have shares in the holding company, Intergraph in life, I'm speaking at transact, connect day on the 27th of November in London. So you might want to short those, those shares on that day. It's a platform debate. But there we go, on the cash question. So I should be my normal polite self, I won't dis anybody will be done for libel yet again. I

Andy Hart: 44:24

wonder if we'd be invited back, or should we cross? Well, there's

Nick Lincoln: 44:27

a certain man once said, it's not unusual for me to be asked to speak, but it's very unusual for me to ever be asked back. Hum, being a point in case. Okay, let's move on to the next part of the show, because we're at about 45 minutes. Let's move on to the meat and potatoes. And this is one that was brought for the Track Pack to discuss by by the voice, by delace, completely unnecessary complications, or cuck, C, U, C, I was going to call them completely odious complications, but that would be cock. And if someone sort of joined the podcast a bit late, we just heard us talk. Cock, it could be somewhat confusing, if not a bit alarming. So we're talking about completely unnecessary complications. Cuck, C, U C, cuck, watch, what are your take on this? What is your take on this?

Carl Widger: 45:11

My first take on this is that I did not name it. I was going to call it the illusion of of productivity. Anyway. Look, there's, this is kind of a wide ranging discussion, because there's so many things that could be said about what's what's becoming kind of more mainstream or acceptable, or what's been sold to clients or proposed to clients. Um, in terms of making what should be very simple Financial Solutions very, very complex. So I've reviewed, to be a little bit careful of this one, right? But I've reviewed a significant high net worth clients portfolio from a discretionary fund manager, and you would not actually believe what is in this particular portfolio. Would there is stuff in there?

Andy Hart: 46:10

What is not in the portfolio? You mean? Is it everything? No, there's

Carl Widger: 46:14

way too, way, way, way too. Yeah, and, and so there's about about half of it in their kind of multi asset portfolios, right, where, so, straight off, off the bat, on that big, big charges, right, that are not being disclosed, and, and, and then you the question is, well, let's have a so if you, if you absolutely believe that this is the best place for the client to be going forward, surely you'd be confident about what has happened before. And if you look back over 12345, I think we can go back six years. Every single year it has underperformed a Vanguard or a DFA equity portfolio every single period. So that's where half of the portfolio is. And then you've got, like, private equity stuff that, you know, there's, there's a there's there's capital calls down the line coming, then you've got direct shares, then you've got, like green investment funds. It is just an absolute another car crash. The difficulty I have found is that you know, talking to a client who's who's significantly wealthy, an unbelievably clever couple know their stuff, and telling trying to put it nicely, that look, this is not fit for purpose, that that big brand that you have chosen to invest your family's fortunes into have done you a disservice. It's difficult, it's it's difficult to actually, to try and put that in a way that doesn't sound salesy, or you never want to be saying that you know, talking about the competitor and and kind of dissing them. But there is nothing only dissing them is what you can do. The one problem we have is okay if you if you want to move over, and I'm still hoping that this particular family do move to Meadows. The unwind of that complex portfolio comes with tax problems, and now you've got to look at, is it worth unwinding this crap? And if you take a very long term view, it is, but do you take short term pain and, and, what if you're well, well matters Ireland. What if you're actually wrong? What if this, these particular strategies, it's a toughie, you know? And, and it's, you know, so, so on the one hand, I have that particular issue going on at the moment, and then on the other hand, I am probably, because of this podcast, I'm kind of listening to stuff that might be interesting. And mainstream media, both print and audio and YouTube, has, you know, as a as a matter of fact, that target date funds. You know, pick your retirement age, that target date funds is the way to go. And I'm going, this makes no sense at all. For the vast majority of people, there are a couple of scenarios, perhaps, where target date funds are appropriate, I will say that. But for the vast majority of clients that the families that we look after have significant wealth, and they're going to be very, very long term investors. And I heard something recently, you know, that it was just said by an influencer, right? So someone who, people would say, would know their stuff, saying, you know, if you want to retire early, then pick your date at age 50, and just do a Vanguard target date fund there, right? So. Yeah, it was nearly really good advice, but actually it was terrible advice, and it will, you know, get more conservative as you approach, and that'll protect your money and blah, blah and again, just to say, I appreciate there are, there are some specific scenarios where it might be appropriate, but that's the beauty of financial planning and cash flow modeling, where you actually do the specific planning and the specific modeling. So, you know, it's just, it's driving me insane. You guys know it's driving me insane because I've told you all in our in our WhatsApp group, it's, it's, it's actually quite difficult to we know. And I suppose the reason I know is because I grew up in the world where I was taught how to do it the wrong way. So I worked for one of the big banks. I, you know, I was a product seller. I have made all the mistakes. So I'm not saying that I haven't been there and done Poor things, because I was also affected by the brainwashing. And I suppose in in a in the product selling words, you've got the provider, number one, the insurance company, you've got the broker, the intermediary, number two, and then you've got the client is way, way further down. And that's why we set up men as Ireland, which was to flip it and put the client at the top all the time, but, but it's difficult when you're out there on your own, saying Not, not on not on our own. There are plenty of other really good firms doing it, but you've got these massive brands who who are just trying to cream massive fees of high net worth individuals. And these high net worth individuals, number one, don't know what they're paying, and number two, believe that they're being offered the best possible advice. And I'm beginning to feel that sometimes perhaps people know that this is not the best thing for their clients. That's a ball. And,

Nick Lincoln: 51:57

um Yeah, no, no, no, no. It's amazing what a mammal believers. I wonder also, whatever they call,

Alan Smith: 52:03

how much of this, this stuff, that it's the kind of effectively locked in, or there's big tax consequences. I wonder how much of that is done intentionally, just to make these assets sticky, just to make as many barriers as possible. You know, how much of it is a core part of their investment philosophy? We believe in all the private equities thing, and how much is it? Yeah, but no one can get out of this for five years or whatever.

Nick Lincoln: 52:23

I think there's floating rate notes and stuff. They're locked in. It's

Alan Smith: 52:27

yeah, structure, structure products we come up against all the time. I've got this for another three years, and if I can't take it out now, it's huge penalties and tickets. Let's just leave that in for the 10. It's just they would say, we believe in this as

Carl Widger: 52:39

a call them. You call them something. You call them something much sexier than just to call them auto callable. Yeah, I'm in a complex investment product, and I think it's a really good idea, yeah. Whereas, you know, go back to keeping it simple stupid, it's like, no,

Andy Hart: 52:54

no, that's that. That's the rub. This whole thing. Complexity, weirdly, is easy to sell. Simplicity is incredibly hard to sell in this business. Just think about a thought experiment. Someone just sold the business. 10 million pounds. 20 million pounds. I go and see a private bank. They literally do a three hour presentation of complete guff create a multi asset mess. Sounds amazing. 28 different lines, items like they can't You can't see the wood for the trees. They leave and go, yeah, that seems like it's okay, darling. They go and see one of us, and we go, here's the solution. Put your 10 million pound in that one fund. It's super cheap. He's going to do everything you want over the next 50 years, and it's a two minute pitch. Complexity is weirdly easy to sell in this business, simplicity is very hard to sell. 100 100% the multi asset thing crops up a lot. I call them the multi asset mess. People call them the multi Asset Fund. They're a multi asset mess. The longer you're in this business, the more you understand how Investment Management works. And basically you try and simplify, simplify, simplify. So I believe the only two asset classes a client should have is global equities and global bonds. Ideally way more global equities. Yeah, we see it all the time, the DFMS, the people that have these, but that's all they that's their whole remit. They don't do any financial planning, they don't do any behavioral coaching. So all you are paying them for is investment management. So by default, they're going to create something that is very convoluted and obviously has high charging fees applied to it, and yeah, the stickier it is to the firm, the better. Back to Alan's point. So it's hard for them to move clients. It's the IKEA effect. They did the thinking and chose the person, then they want to stick to them. You rock up and say, That was a terrible mistake. They've just absolutely hammered your wealth for the last five years. The portfolio they've created is just full of low returns, you know. Again, they don't want to feel feel silly. Again, that's the point that you're mentioning. Carl, you find it hard to basically say what these jokers have created is just a load of crap, and now we need to try and unravel it. So, yeah, there's many moving parts of it. Nicholas,

Nick Lincoln: 54:59

yeah. I mean, not all DFMS are created equal. So just a quick word from our sponsor.

Unknown: 55:05

I think. Hello, Quinton posh boy, here, listen, I've been hearing some nasty rumors that we're viewed as nothing more than a bunch of cheap Grifters. I'll have you know, we're not cheap posh DFM your money our future?

Nick Lincoln: 55:28

Yes, I just, funnily enough, and this, this does segue into the next section of the show, the TRAPPIST question. So I was compiling these show notes today, and I read the TRAPPIST question, and he was talking about that in his firm, but I don't really give it away anyway, he they have a range of funds they can recommend. So I have, I thought I would look at these funds that they recommend, and it's called the ominous, multi manager adventurous fund. And it's basically tracker funds. It's about the top 10 holdings are 10 tracker funds. There are four UK tracker funds in this fund of funds, four UK trackers. You talk about over layering and duplication of stock holdings. And this fund is charging 97 bips point nine, seven of a percent. Okay. To get into tracker funds, you've got to add on the advisor charge. I'm sure you've got to add on a platform charge. On top of that as well, the top holding in this fund charges seven basis points. And you can get it through ominous for 97 basis points. And on the Fun Fact Sheet, they've got a nice chap in a suit and tie, who's the multi fund manager, who apparently picks these funds, and it's part of their blur. It's just infuriating. It's just wrong as part of their blurb. So this is a fund of funds that's totally based on track of funds as part of their blurb. The investment approach taken by pine bridge, also known as fund of funds, offers this benefit. The pine bridge team choose only funds that are managed by very high quality and expert fund managers. So your money is under the control of a large number of highly talented individuals. There are no individuals involved in the funds running those portfolios their computer algorithms. So that, to me, has a very oblique reference to the truth TRAPPIST, you do? You take it as you see it. But this absolutely enrages me. And it's, look at the layering of

Alan Smith: 57:27

cost. You've got this, right? Omnis, omnis, who are something, and then he appointed someone called Pine bridge, who started and who they are, so fund manager or something, who, in turn, go out and select a bunch of index funds and for which you could buy directly for seven basis points, but buy through them for all these layers of people and stuff and goo and gunk for 97 basis points. But

Andy Hart: 57:52

just think what's happened that real people's life savings, the returns are 40% less compared to drives me nuts. Compound, that's that that's only over five years. If we were going over 10 years, it would be close to half their wealth has been curtailed just by adding on all of this over complexity. It was the investment. What's the investment performance Nick is got on the Fun Fact Sheet? The benchmarks done 39% over five years. And this thing has done 24 so it's 40% less. So real family, 40%

Nick Lincoln: 58:27

I looked at the, you know, the one fund that I use my clients in terms of electric exposure, has done just 80% over that time. And that's, that's just me, just saying we're going with this fund. We're not Fanny around. We're not say that 10% versus

Alan Smith: 58:40

what's this fund

Nick Lincoln: 58:40

done? 25 period, 24 25% No,

Alan Smith: 58:44

at the same time. Let's be clear on that. Is it 40 or sorry,

Andy Hart: 58:49

Nick's one fund to rule all funds that Nick calls has done 80% the benchmarks done 40, to keep it simple. And this funds done 25 so 8040 so

Alan Smith: 58:59

25 versus 80 or I know past performance is no guarantee that we're slacking

Nick Lincoln: 59:05

off. The fund that we're slacking off is 40% in the UK, again, they makes it makes a big asset allocation call as well. And of course, the UK, right, is a shrinking part of the global capitalization, going down from 4% shortly, probably, to sub 3% so that's nice. It will never be. It'll never be funds. You know, because, because of the cost you're carrying, basically 1% cost, just for this guy to pick index trackers. No, I'm sure, if you're a shareholder in the underlying in the holding company that owns ominous you're happy, as Larry with this. I'm not. It's outrageous. Coming back to the theme that Carl brought into the show the meeting that this, there's this illusion, this keeping stuff complicated. I wrote a piece in the summer of last year, and I put links to the so called show notes about simplicity. 99% of people in this country will be served by three tax wrappers, a financial plan and one equity fund. And that's that's all you need. What did I say? Where's my stupid quote? Yeah. One. Plan to guide them all, three pots, to drive them one fund, to fuel them all. And in the simplicity mind them just, just playing on the on the token. Well, nice thing, but it's so true poetry, but people don't want to hear it, right? As Andy said, they don't. They want to sizzle.

Carl Widger: 1:00:16

The other thing, Nick as well, right? If you have one fun solutions, right? You have your platform cost, you have your fund cost, and you have your advisor fee, right it? And it's so, so straightforward. Now go back to the example I said earlier on. The client says I'm paying a half percent. That's all I'm paying. And you try and drill down. Now, number one is really hard to actually find out what the client is paying. So there's a half percent thing in there, right? And it's like, Oh, does that as well? Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that I know some of the Oh, you have private equity. So that's sorry, but that, no, that's about 3% and there's harden rates in there as well. But hey, in the multi MPs, multi portfolio solution, whatever you call it, there's no advisor fee on that, because that's in the fee. And by the way, oh well, we've downloaded the fact sheet on that, and it says that it's 1.6 I know there's an institutional share class at this time. It's actually not so. So what ordinary clients are paying is not what this Yeah, so you have a different share class, you've different fund, basically,

Unknown: 1:01:31

they've done

Carl Widger: 1:01:32

your deal. So what's, what's the, what's the fee, guys, yeah, hmm, we'll have to come back to you on that, right? And it's, it's, it's bloody disgraceful. It is absolutely disgraceful.

Andy Hart: 1:01:45

On some DFMS, I've seen the whole fee section go to page nine. See the fee section is literally blank. The whole page is blank. Yeah?

Alan Smith: 1:01:52

It just says on request. Ask Us On request, and we'll have a long phone call with you and bamboozle you. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Said

Nick Lincoln: 1:02:07

Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance. And how true is that? Sorry, gone.

Alan Smith: 1:02:14

Yeah, this is naive complexity versus elegant sophistication. That's a weird elegant sophistication that delivers results, not this, all this other stuff. And Carl, what you just said there, I can so relate to that. Over the years, the amount of times I've gone through, and my colleagues have gone through exactly that with well known big brand, kind of, yeah, your posh. DFM, posh ones, ones that advise, you know, the the elites that the royal family, you You name it, and you try and you know the, and I think we talked about this before, it does ring a bell that we, the client just is caught in the middle of all this. You're saying, No, I'm telling you, this is the truth. But they're, they're mate from posh, DFM, or you want to call them, he's been looking after them for a number of years and probably taking them to Wimbledon of the opera or something else. He's saying something, something different. And the poor clients in the middle say, Who the hell? Who the hell do I believe? And I've, you know, had this, and it's just so awful. It's frustrating. Sometimes

Andy Hart: 1:03:09

there's generations Alan, so like, the parents are involved in it, the kids are involved in it. And you're telling the kids, it's a load of Garth. And it's like, well, my mum and dad have been using them for years,

Alan Smith: 1:03:18

and he's Roger, that's lovely chap. And, you know, we visited my grandfather and all this sort of stuff, and that's what you're up against, ultimately,

Nick Lincoln: 1:03:25

bloody, bloody

Alan Smith: 1:03:26

good bunch of his cold room, yep, oh, I'll tell you. I'll tell you a quick story about this. I don't want for a while, very, very great story about exactly that. Yeah, look it up quick. Come on, still this morning,

Unknown: 1:03:41

grab yourself a drink, a very long drink. It's story time with Alan Smith,

Alan Smith: 1:03:50

years ago, before I knew any better, we outsourced, we intentionally put our clients into these sort of things. Didn't know any better. Thought, well, it's particularly if the numbers got higher and higher and bigger, I thought, well, I'm out of my depth here. So we referred on to it. I won't actually be unfair to mention them by name. They're still around, though. And we referred on to this proper posh DFM, you know, everyone had the right double barreled names and spoke with the right accents and went to the right schools. And I this client who's effectively kind of retired Colonel or something, sort of ex military guy, really posh himself. And we set up a meeting, set up a meeting to so we came in to this, this firms, and, you know, really fancy office in the West End of London, and you could just tell the wealth dripping, dripping off the place. And we go into the board meeting. We meet like they bring in about three people, this sort of Chief Investment Officer, and someone else and someone else are all sort of sitting around there, and then a big, you know, polite knock on the door. And I couldn't believe it, this guy comes in, this kind of really elderly bloke, but with a frock coat, you know, you know, the long coat that people had, sort of almost the military style with the tea and all the biscuits and cakes and everything else he wheels this COVID. This thing, you know, very elegantly, pause the tea and all this stuff. And it was, it was a it was a piece of theater. It was, it was wonderful. It was really good from what they did. Was amazing. It was only, you know, some years later, when I started paying much more attention to this stuff, that I realized that was the most expensive cup of tea that client has ever had in his life by some margin, and and we had to extract him and offer him you could send him a case of tea and coffee and everything else the rest of his life for a fraction of the cost. But I must say, how they delivered it was, was a, was a lovely experience. And you know, a lot of these things come back to that. And as they call the people that you're talking about, I have no doubt that they have a very enjoyable experience, which is all that a lot of people's all you've got to go by. He was lovely. She was lovely. Yeah? Nice, nice office, yeah, send us nice emails and bulletins and stop reports. Blahdy blah. So the experience is important and you're up against it, yeah? Let me just, I had a seminar.

Carl Widger: 1:06:00

Just, just, just, just, let me tell a quick story on that one, we had a similar one. Mettis was only maybe two years old, and we were pitching for a big piece of business, and I thought it was going really well. And I think I've told you this before, but that the clients were also being courted by some of the big banks, private banks in the UK, and we didn't get the business. And one of the reasons we didn't get the business was that the clients were brought to lunch with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Nick Lincoln: 1:06:33

Oh my god, he just crushed. I'd have been straight over to you.

Carl Widger: 1:06:39

Yeah, the same clients came back to us last year, and we did win some business from those same clients. But, uh, yeah. So look, they Yeah, they hate the experience. Look, we're all for the experience too. And I've been to your office, Alan, and I got a beautiful cup of coffee with your your logo. And so look where the experience is

Andy Hart: 1:06:59

not lost. He's working out the CO work now, sort of it. Yeah, it's

Carl Widger: 1:07:03

very, I've been in that co workers. It is really, really, really cool

Andy Hart: 1:07:08

work out of a co working space. That's the question you got to ask yourself. Hey,

Carl Widger: 1:07:12

I thought it was very cool anyway. But yeah, look, the experience is the experience. It's, it's under the bonnet. Under the bonnet is where people need to get to, and they don't want to go there. They don't want to go there, but, but it's our duty to go there on their behalf. Well, that's it. Tell the truth. What can we do about the money? What can we do better?

Alan Smith: 1:07:34

I'll give a couple of couple of thoughts on that. I just want to read out this quote from Who else but Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett said a few years ago, the financial elites, wealthy individuals, pension funds, college endowments and the like, have great trouble meekly signing up for a financial product or service that's available as well to people investing only a few$1,000 this reluctance of the rich normally prevails, even though the product at issue is on an expectancy basis, clearly the best choice. Warren Buffett, letter to shareholders, 2016 Warren Buffett, one of the finest investors ever in history, is saying exactly the same thing as we're all saying. He lives and breathes amongst billionaires and experiences this in his own life, and it often talks about these wealthy people who hire Wall Street hedge funds to manage their wealth when they'd be better off doing something much more simple and less complex. Without question. We've talked about this in the past. I, tongue in cheek said in the past, if our investments so this is about words and language and framing, and we use things like, we'll just buy the greatest companies in the world, but buy a low cost index fund. It's good enough, and it just goes against the grain for a lot of sophisticated, wealthy individuals who pretty much everything else in their life, they go for the best. They go for, you know, a nice car, a nice house to go on good holidays, all that other stuff. And you're saying, this is the same fund that my my driver, my cleaner, my whoever also can get access to. It doesn't, doesn't feel right. You know, half children. I said we should just rebrand our investment portfolios and call them something like the quant, you know, the global quant wealth preservation fund, because that's kind of what if you use dimensional by the way, they use quantitative analysis. That's a core part of their philosophy and but it's but they but dimensional themselves, and everyone who uses them refer to this thing called Evidence Based Investing that's a bit weak to these. What do you mean evidence based this? You know, the private you can produce evidence of whatever you want within reason, using time scales and what have you. It's not the most compelling descriptor. I don't think evidence based. And this thing, by the way, wealth preservation. Everyone loves that idea. Wealth preservation is quite good, but actually is what we do. We're preserving your wealth in defense of the prevailing rate of inflation over time. That's kind of a. Core thing of what we do, so package it up. I mean, my integrity means I can't do that. I can't sort of use those words in language. But that's using an extreme example in terms of how you would use your description. I think we could maybe get better at describing this stuff. The other tip, I would say, depending on the client, a lot of our clients are, as you guys are, as well. Are kind of successful business people, and they always seem to want the best. You know, they do what they strive and what is the best solution? What's the secret sauce? Where does it go? And I think you can say quite a lot about our investment philosophy in that honestly, really, really smart people, particularly those who know their stuff. And I mean academics, you will not find a professor of economics in any university or any sort of academic place around the world who buys this junk that you're talking about. They just don't do it. Those who spend their life deep in the weeds of the data you just you won't most of the, yeah, most of the you know, the experts on this stuff. So positioning something that is more sophisticated, because none of us just use pure index funds and nothing else even that would be good enough. But it's a bit more sophisticated. And, you know, mentioned before, mentioned again, the idea of family fortress, use that words and language. This is, this is the important stuff for a bit of fun, bit of sophistication. You want investment, playpen, buy your body, private equity and all your other stuff out there. If you want, you want to have a punt. You want to go Bitcoin, you know, you name it. You can that. You can do that. But your family's financial security is far more more important than sort of taking a bet on what some other, you know, third party fund manager thinks is the right thing this week, and may change his mind next week. So build your core family fortress. Build your investment playpen on the sides. And the last thing I'd say as well, I'm sure we've mentioned this in the past, and joining the dots back to the conversation about the Norwegian Oil Fund, where people have said, Yes, but I've got 8 million, 10 million, 20 million, of assets. You're never going to have as much as what have they got trillion?

Andy Hart: 1:12:05

We've got some 7 trillion USD, $1.7

Alan Smith: 1:12:08

trillion and they are predominantly invested in the fact that they are an index fund themselves. They just buy companies some bonds. They run the edges. And if it's good enough for $1.7 trillion of assets, that's good enough. You 10 million pounds, my friend. And finally, recognize that you can't win them all. I say, if someone's absolutely dead set on having some complex thing, then again, you stick to your philosophy. You talk the unvarnished truth. We've got a very comprehensive investment philosophy document which is backed up by data and evidence, what she'll be happy to share parts of with any particular client. And beyond that, if you want to, if they want to fight their battles, then we can only help people that will want to be helped by us. Andrew,

Andy Hart: 1:12:53

yeah, no. Some good points, I think, pick your battles here, as you mentioned. Alan, people would always want status purchases is no different when it comes to their money. In some ways, they're almost seeking a status purchase. Even more stronger when it comes to their money and their life savings, I will say to younger financial advisors, we work really well. I work really well. We're slightly clued up. Insiders, it's slightly clued up. They understand that there's a lot of BS out there, and they're not going to be sold some, you know, long winded investment story. So we work slightly well. We work well with slightly clued up insiders. People have got a little bit of knowledge, and they understand that, you know, probably index investing is okay. They understand half of our story anyway, because you can spend a lot of time as advisors trying to unpick these situations and trying to win these clients over, but you might be wasting a shed load of your time. So yeah, pick your battles when you come across these things in real life, because people have got a strong force towards these status purchases. Nick, okay, all right, well, I

Nick Lincoln: 1:13:55

think we'll wrap this up, if that's okay with you. James, I think this is a really pressing issue, and I'm really glad that Carly brought this into the into the show for episode 58 a couple of things. I did meet a very young guy who works for a DFM firm at a recent CIS I ethics event. He sort of came over to me. So you Lincoln. I loved, I worked for DFM, but I love trap. I won't give away his name, but it works for the oldest stock, I think, in the country. Rhymes with Mighty Quinn. So nice to meet him. And this is a more prosaic just, just think about language and how we just give it away terms, and we should be too straightforward terms. You know, it's not, it's like, it's not accumulation, it's saving, it's not decumulation, it's spending. You've got tax free cash and you've got taxable cash. Your Flexi access drawdown is a taxable cash. Just use words that people can relate to, right? That we just get caught up in this. And a very prosaic example, yesterday, I went to town with my boy. We go to Houston. We're walking through Houston Concourse, and some of this voice comes over the town, or he says, For those not familiar with Euston, welcome. We're serviced by the northern and Victoria lines. Around the corner is Euston square, and on there, you've got the Met line, Hammersmith and. City in circle nine. If you want to reach Euston square, it five minute walk, just turn westbound on Euston road. Now, Euston is full of people from Birmingham, Manchester, Carlisle, Scotland. They don't know London's East from West, right, and you can't see the sun engaging because we're in the UK. It's November. The sun is a myth until next year. Want to just say, leave the station and turn right. Now he's got to say, Turn westbound. It's just like this everywhere. More important and our business, this thing about is just laden with jargon that does nothing to help anybody feel

Andy Hart: 1:15:33

right. Are you feeling right? Nick you left South Watford. Okay, that's five minutes

Nick Lincoln: 1:15:39

for 15 minutes for 15 minutes on a fast train, not the 40 minutes from hatch end for you, right? Let's move on to put your North question, because I can see post is at our

Andy Hart: 1:15:47

front door. Sorry, North waffle. I

Nick Lincoln: 1:15:48

am in I am in North waffle, but I can't pick up every detail. We wouldn't get the show finished. There is TRAPPIST at the front door, ringing the

Unknown: 1:15:54

front door bell. I

Nick Lincoln: 1:15:55

can see she's holding the bulging sack of TRAPPIST questions, dear TRAPPIST, if you want to leave a question for us. Please do so via the pinned X or the pin tweet, whatever you want to call it. Also, there's a link in the so called show notes. Now let's see who this first letter is from. We're gonna do two questions today, so let's keep our answers cogent and on point. The first one is from our repeat offender, young Mr. Aaron gunning him, who's on Twitter as at Aaron gunningham. And this one is for Alan and Carl ray to address. I think this question might be more appropriate to our multi advice business owners, as you have grown your client banks and therefore exceeded your capacity, how have you dealt with the workload, and what terms have you offered new advisors regarding the sharing of existing clients and new leads? For example, have you kept all of your existing clients and given away your leads or introduced your clients to new advisors. Has your success? That's about 18th question I only doing well here. Has your success negatively affected any of your existing client relationships? Right? Guys, brief, cogent to the point I'll take that. I

Carl Widger: 1:16:57

go because you go. Alan, no, no, you go. Because everything I'm gonna say is basically what Alan told me, bro, because I had to go and talk to Alan about this particular issue, right? So just so go for it. Yeah,

Alan Smith: 1:17:13

didn't we have a whole episode on this. The Yeah, you're handing across clients, you know, briefly, brief. Years and years ago, years and years ago. What Aaron just described, I've been through exactly that. Got to capacity. Briefly, got to capacity. Shush, you're interrupting. Got to capacity myself and, long story short, distributed all my client relationships amongst other advisors in the team, therefore freed up capacity for myself, which worked really well. And now we're going through, we're going through another phase of that right now. We've We've recruited more advisors, and those existing ones are handing across client relationships to others. There's an ongoing, cascading approach. It's a perfectly rational and reasonable thing to do this historical strategy, which is when the industry came from a sales industry entirely to like a sales industry, where it's more of a service profession. Nowadays, you need to be far smarter about aligning people, relationships, personalities, with clients. Just because, you know, the advisor was in the office that day when a phone call came in, doesn't mean they should always be the advisor to look after them. Therefore, we've segregated these things out. We distributed clients amongst existing advisors. Advisors are, you know, and how people get paid, what she asked for as well. But I go into huge detail, but people are rewarded like like any professional, you know, any professional should do. They get paid a very healthy salary, plus a very comprehensive set of benefits, and there are rewards and bonuses for various activities, KPIs and, you know, managing new business and taking on new clients, every firm is a bit different. You know, just how we remunerate people doesn't mean it will apply to Aaron or car or anyone else, but it kind of, it kind of works, but I think it's very important that the client sees you as a team, as opposed to one individual. That's what we've tried to do all the time, and bring other people into meetings and make sure there's other resources for client communication. It's it's very it's fairly straightforward, and the the problem is more in your head as the advisor than it is the advisor than it is the clients. The client just wants an ongoing relationship, as long as you're still around in the background. That's that goes on, anything to add to that. Carl,

Carl Widger: 1:19:29

yeah, I that last point you made. I think I left it way, way, way too long. And I'd say, got to close to burnout as a result. And I was thinking, Oh, the clients only want me. They actually don't. And you know what? For absolute I'm absolutely positive about this. Now the clients are getting a much better level of service. Now, because I was ending up, I was so busy, I was just reacting. And I know all of our private client managers are so proactive. It to have a plan for every single client for the year ahead, right? I was just like, Oh, Jesus, another query coming in, and you're trying to deal with it all. So I would say, if you're looking to build a firm over time, start doing this very, very quickly and leave yourself loads and loads of time, because the more time then that I found I've freed myself up to do, the more, it's a bit of a silly word, but the more kind of rain making, because I'm free to be out there and to be talking to other people, and then I'll often sit in on the first meeting, maybe even two, and in a really big case, maybe even three or four meetings, right? That's okay, but I will have the client will know, this is your private client manager, this is your financial your financial planner, and so they know that I'm not going to be the lead person going forward, but more than happy to sit in in the early days, and Alan would have said it to me, Jesus, Alan, you probably said it to me six years ago, right? And I didn't do it, and I didn't really do it until I only started doing it to at the start of last year, still haven't completed it, so it's still work in progress, but I definitely left it way too long, and it probably stunted our growth a small but I would say, as a result, so And since I freed it up, the business has just flourished, absolutely flourished. Yep,

Alan Smith: 1:21:19

it's the right thing to do.

Nick Lincoln: 1:21:20

Okay, great stuff, great answers. Thanks guys. Okay, on the second question, this is from anonymous name on has to be, isn't this is from a K Penny packer, can we carefully say that wrong ways? I know. K Penny packer, advising,

Alan Smith: 1:21:36

okay,

Nick Lincoln: 1:21:38

yes, yeah, advising for three years with around 5 million funds under management. I work for the sorry, I work under the open work partnership, and I'm surprised for them, the number of advisors using the network's own funds on this who we discussed earlier, for all their clients, simply because the network encourages this. Does it? Kay Penny packer, wow. Who'd have thought when I have mentioned to other advisors that I try and use a range of different funds. On the proposition panel, I am met with looks of confusion. I'm interested in the thoughts of the trap team about restricted advisors and the funds available to them. Thank you for reading Ultra you kick off. Well,

Andy Hart: 1:22:12

this is quite an interesting point. This is all around vertical integration and firms that have their own funds and then their their advisor network can recommend it. Obviously,

Unknown: 1:22:24

you underestimate the power of a dark side. I was just gonna

Andy Hart: 1:22:28

say, if we take the extreme example of SJP, they can only recommend SJP fund. So this is an open work advisor saying it's recommended that they recommend the internal funds, but they have the option to go elsewhere. And then there are other companies, like quilter. And also, I think you picked up on it recently, didn't you? Nick with best invest to invest in, till knee funds, till knee owned, best invest. So, so this is a wider issue and all that, yeah, all perfectly, perfectly legal. So, yeah, this is vertical integration and the limitations, or the over reliance on recommending funds within the groups of the different companies. So he's right to question it. But again, I think other things are more important, like proper financial planning, getting the asset allocation right. If he's invested in 100% global equity fund that's, you know, a white label that the company that he works for. I haven't really got a problem with it. As I say, there's, there's, there's other issues, I think, slightly more important. But yeah, it's a wider issue going on vertically integrated firms. Is it right? Is it wrong? Nick over to

Nick Lincoln: 1:23:38

you. Yeah, quickly. I'm sure that your network does encourage you to use the ominous funds. I'm sure that they it sells through compliance far more easily than if you don't use ominous funds. I'm sure that your network gives you lovely drafted paragraphs to put into the suitability letters when you use their own funds, maybe not quite so forthcoming if you don't use their own funds. Read between the lines there. K pennypack, I gave my views on the omnis fund earlier on. I think I'll leave it at that. Okay, let's go on to culture corner.

Alan Smith: 1:24:10

Am I first? I have the thing in front of me, right? I'm gonna recommend this is, this is a book recommendation for anyone who is building a business, any business at all, financial planning business would be appropriate. It's not a financial planning book. It's a book about business building. There's a gentleman by the name of Paul Lewin, l, u e n. His book is called eight figure entrepreneur. Links from the show notes. I read it recently prior to having him on my podcast, bulletproof entrepreneur to talk about it. And effectively, he's built, he's created, built businesses from scratch. He's sold them. He's done everything the whole kind of entrepreneurial journey. And he's effectively why I describe it is, he's distilled everything down to almost like a business owner playbook about marketing, growth, pricing, culture, how to run a board meeting, all sorts of really. Interesting stuff. It's quite a few a quick and easy read. Anyone who is currently running a business or plans to start and grow a business, you'd be well worth buying downloading that book, eight figure entrepreneur. I thank you.

Andy Hart: 1:25:12

Have you read it all year? Is it decent? Yeah,

Alan Smith: 1:25:15

yep. I read it. I've read it. I've highlighted it a lot. You only go on Kindle, that's where I read books and I highlight. And eventually Kindle, there's a there's a limit so many highlights Kindle allows you to do, because eventually you end up highlighting the entire book. And it was pretty close to the limit. There's a lot of good stuff in there, as I say, not financial services book. One interesting point he makes, just from a pricing viewpoint, he said, you should, you should pitch your services about 15% above the market rate. This is again, back to behavioral price, you know, framing, but you've got to have the service experience to deliver it. Why it's worthwhile? You're paying a bit more. But it's just if you if you are the same as everyone else, then the client, the prospective client, is going to assume you are the same as everyone else. If your price is the same, interesting, and there's a ton of other stuff in there. I do recommend it.

Andy Hart: 1:26:04

Wow, good. Maybe check that out. Okay, over to me. My recommendation is a podcast. It's on YouTube. I watched it on YouTube and watch it on podcast platforms. It's Errol musk, who's the father of Elon Musk, growing up in South Africa, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, various other things that they cover. I think it's brilliant. His entrepreneurial journey is insane on its own, let alone with the Elon connection, yeah, strong recommendation. Definitely worth checking it out. He's had some very colorful stories in the past, shall we say, living in living in South Africa through apartheid and all the other different changes that's going on there. So yeah, it's well worth a listen of your time. Over to you. Nicholas,

Nick Lincoln: 1:26:50

hockey, Rocky. So mine is a book that I read on Kindle, like storyteller. Mine is the missing crypto queen. And this is quite an old story actually, somehow must have passed me by. It was originally a BBC podcast. It's about this. Well, everyone's an entrepreneur these days. Apparently, there's this, this, this Bulgarian lady and Gorgeous George barbots gonna kill me, but I think it's Dr ruya Ignatova. I think you pronounce it ruya. And again, it was just get the book. It reads really well. It's fast paced. It's like a spy novel. There's all these various shady figures involved. It was pyramid selling of crypto five, six years ago. Yeah.

Andy Hart: 1:27:32

Does it feature that guy, Nick, who's like, the the best in the world? The guy, yes, yes,

Nick Lincoln: 1:27:39

he does, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Millions

Andy Hart: 1:27:41

and millions and millions.

Nick Lincoln: 1:27:44

I think, I think she, Dr ruya might have reappeared recently, but then suddenly in the book, she just vanishes off into, I think it's Greece she goes to and never to be seen again when her scheme collapses. And where did the money go? And it's just,

Alan Smith: 1:27:58

well, you know, well, a lot of people are people. People are gullible. People agree what they want to hear.

Nick Lincoln: 1:28:04

It's greed. It's green and it is tragic. You know, there's people, they're like villages in Africa that put their money into this. There are working, not people with much money, who put all their savings into because perhaps the only thing they can see out of their situation, you know, yeah, working people. I mean, these people exist. I mean, the four of us don't know anything about it, but apparently there are people. Apparently there are people out there who work, and these poor saps put put all their money into it. So it's a it's a good read, the missing crypto queen.

Carl Widger: 1:28:33

On next nothing to do with financial planning or investing or anything like that, because I got awful serious earlier on. This is wilderness by with Simon Reeve. It's on the RT player, but it's a BBC series, so you guys have probably already seen it. It's absolutely incredible, and it's it just kind of proved to me how little of the world I've seen, and also proved to me, that's a scratch that I definitely an itch that I need to scratch. I should say the first program, yeah, whatever. The first one is, he went to the Congo. Second when he went to Patagonia. And it's like, these are incredible, incredible, incredible places that, you know, I definitely want to go and see some of these places. But just the program is beautifully put together. It's really, really well done with the, the the the, basically the team that he has traveling with them. I would highly recommend everybody have a look at this.

Alan Smith: 1:29:39

I like, I like

Carl Widger: 1:29:41

all your idea, yeah, yeah, yeah, how small your little old world that you're operating is in, you know, and how big the world out there is. Should

Alan Smith: 1:29:50

we get trap? Trap trip to Patagonia. Hey,

Carl Widger: 1:29:55

I'm telling you. I was like, this is, you know, that all the com guy, he went on the guy. He went to the Congo. Looked like hard work now, but Patagonia, he went to the ice blood, bloody Congo,

Nick Lincoln: 1:30:08

Conrad, Jesus Christ. No,

Carl Widger: 1:30:12

all right, the doctor had to. The doctor had to do something. Oh, my God. Oh, this is incredible stuff. So anyway, yeah, highly recommend it on the RG player for the Irish listeners.

Alan Smith: 1:30:24

Excellent. Thanks. Great stuff.

Nick Lincoln: 1:30:26

Great stuff. Thank you trap pack. Well, listen, we're at 90 minutes. God help us, more or less, let's, let's, let's. Let's tie a bow on this. Let's wrap this episode up. Thank you, dear TRAPPIST, for your precious time and input on the show. Please do rate and review us. Six out of five stars would be lovely. We have broken through the 1000 subscribers on YouTube, which is some kind of achievement, I guess I know. So thank you for all the folks who watch us on there, but I think until the next time that's it, folks, take care out there and we'll see you on the other side. Goodbye, peeps. You.