TRAP: The Real Adviser Podcast
Four business-owning entrepreneurial knuckleheads chew the fat on the sometimes murky, always quirky, world of UK and Irish personal finance.
TRAP: The Real Adviser Podcast
97 - TRAP LIVE26!
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In this latest pile of TRAP, live and in front of 240 devoted and very thirsty TRAPists at 229 Great Portland Street, the Trap Pack discuss
- Topical Titbits
- Meat and Potatoes: TRAP TRACK 2026
- TRAPist question from… our audience, strictly Chatham House, so nada for you. 45 mins of gold dust, which you got, if you were there.....
- Culture Corner
Show links: http://tiny.cc/traplinks
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Up, good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Advisor Podcast Live Event 2026 Ran aboard, I turned up, and with no expectations and no prior notes to what I was doing today, and he says, "See, see, you're all set, and I said,"Yeah, fine, I'll say welcome, and I'm going to hand it over to you guys, because you're the stars of the show. Said, "Will you do your intro, right? Okay, so I'm going to read that intro, which I actually asked ChatGPT to do for me, and it absolutely slated them, so I'm not actually going to include that. I'm going to be slightly kinder, but before we begin, I've been asked to keep this introduction professional, which is difficult considering the people involved in the show, and for those that you that don't know, the team, Alan, Andy, Carl, and the other positive one, Nick, are the four hosts tonight. Collectively, these men have around 97 years of industry experience with the maturity level of a teenage boy's football away trip. Honestly, listening to them prepare for this podcast has been remarkable. Four financial advisors, all supposedly experts in communication, unable to arrange four chairs on a stage, but I know I'm speaking on all of our behalves. We needed this podcast because beneath the sarcasm, questionable fashion choices, inability to mute themselves or work technology properly, they genuinely care about the industry, us as advisors, and client outcomes. So, thank you all for being here. Get comfortable, lower your expectations. And welcome to the Real Advisor Podcast 2026 Welcome to the Real Advisor Podcast, T R A P T Trup. 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.
Nick Lincoln:Yes, indeed. Dear Trappers, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 97 of the Real Advisor podcast, tr ap trap. My name is officially Lick Lincoln. And joining me, not in the digital studio of Doom, but in a real place, the fantastic 229 Great Portland Street, in front of a live audience, are the three other horsemen of the
Ola Abdul:apocalypse.
Nick Lincoln:Great stuff, great stuff. I was going to say something that I forgotten already, already cut down. So never mind, we'll go straight into it, which we'll start, I think, with you, young man, my right honorable friend Andrew Assaneh, heart with another high energy review read.
Andy Hart:Thank you, Nicholas. Hopefully people can hear me. Hello everybody, huge thank you for rocking up. So, let's get cracking. Okay, the review today is from Dave Wild Dip PFS, who's not charted proudly. My kind of guy is entitled, 'Hi Nick, I had a message from my office that you called. That is not a phone call you wish to get. Unfortunately, they took your number down a digit short, so I couldn't return your call. As you know, I can't make Trap Live, but I've given my ticket to a young man who is early-ish in the profession, so hopefully he'll see some benefit. Will be the judge, pretty gutted. I can't make it, but I'll be there in 2027 Had an operation on my back on Wednesday, which I thought would be relatively small. Turns out it wasn't, and 40 odd stitches mean I'm laid up and out of action, currently awaiting the test results on what they removed for the big C. So I'm proverbially climbing the walls, anyway. I'm rabbiting on, and so I'm closing in saying one day I'll get to shake all four of your hands and tell you all just how much your podcast altered the course of my career and life. Hopefully, Wednesday is brilliant. Look forward to listening back in a couple of weeks. Cheers, Dave. Okay, so very serious message from Dave, but I think we're going to give him. Of a round of applause, and wishing its recovery, whatever the results. Back to you, Nicholas, to do the introduction properly now.
Nick Lincoln:Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Want to get a quick word out there to our brand partners who are here tonight. We're really, really grateful and glad to be associated with them. I'm sure you've seen some of the people here from Fundman and Vanguard, they've been great to work with. They're totally aligned with the ethos of the Trap Pack, just two really good brands. And well, we're just super chuffed, and it looks like, hi Matt, it looks like we're, we're renewing that relationship car.
Andy Hart:XX, Vanguard,
Carl Widger:we are indeed. Yeah, look, I have been tasked to talk to Vanguard on the trap behalf, because last year we all spoke to them on trap's behalf, and that didn't work out very well. So Vanguard, sincere apologies for that, but they've been absolutely fabulous to deal with. They really have. We're a little bit kind of scratching our heads, still blown away, the fact that a firm the size of Vanguard want to be involved with this podcast, but all credit to them, because they really, you know, feel that they want to make a difference to advisors. I've spoken to Ben, to Adele. I did a podcast with Maddie. Maddie is somewhere in the audience, I think, and I've spoken to Roy as well. They were absolutely brilliant to deal with, and we are delighted this evening to announce that they have renewed their partnership with us for a further year. So, thank you so much, Vanguard. We really appreciate
Nick Lincoln:storyteller. You've got some open news,
Alan Smith:hot off the press WhatsApp exchange this morning with my friend at the front row, Ola. So I'm also pleased to announce that Funment have renewed their sponsorship of the Re Advisor Podcast for the next year. So, again, thank you very much to Funment, to Ola, and all your wonderful colleagues. Thank you.
Nick Lincoln:We have a show packed full of absolutely nothing, so let's start unpacking it straight away.
Andy Hart:Ultra, you've got a story for us. If you are wondering, I'm half Welsh and half Scottish, that's why the Welsh flag is behind me, even though I don't. No one cares. Sorry. Thank you very much. Okay, so it's my first topical tidbit. I don't know if anybody's seen this in the room. BWD consensus, financial advisor earnings. Anyone read this? Surprisingly not
Carl Widger:before they come over. It's
Andy Hart:a lot of good news here. So they come out with their advisor earnings consensus every year. A few highlights: employed advisors' wages on average went up from 85,000 to 98,000 Self-employed financial advisors' average wages went from 99,000 to 104 Obviously, none of them are going to declare 104 We all know the reasons why. Keep up, Smithy. and there's a lot of other things that they're mentioning here, a couple of other things that I find quite insightful. Restricted advisers earn, on average, way more than independent advisors, that might be the SJP skewing there, but I'm just reading between the lines. The highest paid people on the list were say it carefully, private bankers. Yes, so good news. The something else I found quite interesting was advisors age between 20 and 30, their average earnings are 66,000 pounds. It's incredibly high earnings to age bracket. I was earning nowhere near that at that age. Yeah, so it's good news for us. Yeah, with this mighty profession, is very paid very well.
Alan Smith:Which were you earning when you were 20 something?
Andy Hart:I was my first job was 700 pounds a month,
Alan Smith:700 a month.
Andy Hart:Yes, slightly less than that now. Any any thoughts.
Carl Widger:Yeah, I like my starting salary was 7000 Irish punts, and like it was, it was impossible to live on that amount of money, and you build a career then over 30 odd years, and that's how long it takes to kind of make a success of it, and I'm on record, and my kids are here, so this is probably a message for three of my four kids are here, like it does take a long time to become an expert in something, and it takes a long time, and I just find with some of the younger folks coming in that they're potentially looking for too much too soon, and to be an expert in this field, if we want to call ourselves a profession, like the lawyers and the accountants, and if that's what we aspire to, if we want to be get that level of respect, I guess. Well, you got to be able to put in the hard yards, you really do, and. And it's a magnificent career, I do believe we have much more impact on our clients' lives than accountants and solicitors do, so it's very fulfilling work, but it's a long career, you got to do the exams, you got to grind it out, you got to work through the ranks, and that's what it will work, but too, too much at the moment. I'm seeing people looking for too much too soon. You got to grind it out. It will reward you in the long term. I always say to the folks working in our office, you know, well, if we're asking our clients to look to the long term all the time, that's what our firm is going to do, look to the long term, but also you got to look to the long term and grind it out, that's just my take on
Andy Hart:it. I agree, what you say, Carl, but I'm staggered that the age group between 20 and 30, the average earnings for a financial advisory is 66,000 It sounds quite punchy quite soon. The other thing, good news for the room, the highest earning age demographic is between 50 and 60, get
Nick Lincoln:in, get in, one
Andy Hart:of one of us, one of us is over that age demographic, you work it out, Smith, there you're next
Alan Smith:on the subject. Well, what I would say is this podcast and the community that it's built is very helpful to sort of get the mood of what's going on in the market, because we all get either through the group or individually messages from often from younger advisors, right, and there's a kind of narrative out there, and I see this online, I see it in articles about it's really hard to attract new talent to the sector. We're not seeing that we all get quite.. I get quite a few messages from younger advisors looking for an opportunity. Younger advisors looking for an opportunity, looking to break into what we've called full fat financial planning, proper planning firms, and also career changes as well, which is another interesting dynamic. There's, I mean, despite what you might read, that you can't, you can't find people, you can't hire talent. There's a lot of people out there looking, and I can put you for those numbers, for the sort of compensation and salary packages, that's attractive. But it is a good long-term profession, and from what we're seeing, sort of on at that sort of grassroots level, there's a lot of people out there looking to get into it, so it's good, good news.
Nick Lincoln:Yeah, yeah, it's a great profession. Okay, done on that point. Okay, so we've got obviously a fantastic audience here tonight. People have come from all around the world to be here. That's not Billy Bullshit. We've got a very strong Irish contingent, and can stand up, you Irish folk, please,
Carl Widger:Irish punk. Well, hey legends, 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, I Yes, guys, thank you so much for coming. It really means a lot. It makes me very proud that we have an Irish contingent in the Trap Pack, but it's absolutely amazing to see the support. For me, it's like a triumphant return to London. The last time I was in London was back in November. We were doing some filming, actually, with Vanguard, and it was the night before Humans Under Management. And I, unfortunately, and I'm not going to, don't worry, this is not damn squib time, but I got a call saying my dad had passed away, and I wasn't inclined really to come back since, so I'm absolutely well, I'm so proud that three of my four kids, the triplets, are here. Emma's at home, she had an exam today, so it's a triumphant return with my kids, with my partner Aoife, and with so many Irish people here, it's absolutely amazing. It, so that wasn't my topical tidbit, by the way, but I just wanted to give a shout out to a few people. Oh, I should say that there's a number of people from the Irish Ideas Exchange Group here, and that idea was born on traps, so, and it's still going strong. They send messages into the group every week that I have absolutely no clue whatsoever what they're talking about, but it's thriving, and I would say it's going exactly like an ideas exchange group should, should go. So, for those of you out there, or those of you listening, or watching, you know it is something that you, you can get so much benefit out of having a peer group where it's a safe place to have chats and bounce ideas off. Anyway, I've spoken a good bit, I suppose. If you listen back to the starter trap, I got myself in all sorts of bother because I mentioned how far behind the curve. In terms of financial planning, Ireland was, and that's, I don't know, how many years ago did we start this? Four years, so four years ago, and I got absolutely hammered, like week in, week out, but I, it was my truth, I felt it was, it was, it was what was going on, and I have been saying that I think the wheel is turning big time in Ireland, and there's a new report out, and it's the New Retirement Reality Report in Ireland, and this is what I love about it. Number one, I'll get to the report in a second, just very briefly, but it's a, it's a combination of the FPSB, the Institute of Bankers, the FPSB is the Financial Planning Standards Board, the LIA, the Life Assurance Association, and the Retirement Planning Council, these four bodies, who are really important, and if we're going to drive this thing on, they've come together to put this report together, and the report is, I have a copy of it here, it's really well set out, it's really brief, they've kind of nailed all the points, and I won't go through too much, but there is, it did remind me of, we spoke about the Vanguard Connect survey, where advisors thought one thing and clients wanted another. That's coming out in this report as well, whereby a lot of the people who are members of, say, pension funds in Ireland, they're basically saying that they don't even understand the pension fund, and anecdotally somebody said to a colleague of mine, only in the last two weeks, that they felt death in service was, you had to be in the office to die to get the death in service, right? So, like, whilst that's a, that's a funny anecdote, right, but this just demonstrates the point that at its most basic level folks don't understand what we take for granted, and I suppose the recommendations from the report, and I'll finish up on this, is that we break it down into three kind of three core pillars, which is the foundations, which is when you're younger, you get in and you're, you know, you're taught about the very basics of, of number one, your company pension scheme and financial planning, and then you kind of have your midlife review, and you're kind of reviewing things, but you have those foundations, and then you have this transition five years out, you know, you have it now. Look, as real financial planners, we all know that you should be doing it way in advance of that, but hey, if we can make progress, wouldn't that be a great thing? So, yeah, I think Ireland is a really good place. The last episode, I was saying Andy should bring his humans under management to Dublin. I really do think we are ready, and we are in a really good place, and it fills me with huge hope. And if Metas Ireland has been a tiny piece of driving that on over the last few years, well, that's a fantastic legacy for our company to have,
Alan Smith:well, well said, Cock. You want to speak, you can speak. Thank you. Just going back to the point you mentioned before, you shared that, Carl. I just wanted to reiterate the idea of these, this Dublin or Ireland Ideas Exchange, it came because the three three of us, London-based, have been members of something called the Ideas Exchange, based in London, and it's a call it a mastermind group, a bit of a kind of wanky source description mastermind, but anyways, a group of like-minded people, I mean,
Andy Hart:looking around for the mastermind,
Alan Smith:yeah, but since, because we were talking positively about it, getting together with like-minded people, whether there's five of you, 10 of you, 30 of you, there is in London, more than that. Since then, there's.. I know one is also started in the North of Ireland, one is in Scotland, and other parts of the country, and again, I would encourage anyone, I've learned so much from getting together on a monthly basis, having breakfast, and just there's nothing like the financial planning profession for sharing best practice and sharing best ideas. I was telling a lawyer friend of mine about this, he said I would never share all my best thoughts with my competitors in the legal profession. So I would encourage anyone, if you, and especially if you bump into people this evening that are in your sort of location, then try to get together. Just do it. Doesn't have to be informal, just get together, meet for a coffee or breakfast once a month, once a quarter, whatever works out. They're really, really good. So, congratulations to the Irish Ideas Exchange, which seems to be making great progress.
Andy Hart:Yeah, just to follow on the Ideas Exchange thing, I also think they're quite good for you learning what not to do, and horror stories in this
Nick Lincoln:profession,
Andy Hart:as well as hearing great ideas. You hear stuff to avoid as well. Back to your point, Carl, the new retirement reality serve, I had a bit of a scroll through it. The only thing I'm going to pick up on it is the I know some people in the room, Keith specializes on this, or focuses on this, but the role that employers need to step up a bit more when it comes to the financial wellbeing of all of their employees. I know it's getting bigger, obviously. First started with debt in service, pension schemes, now there's a whole host of stuff that employees offer, so I think that area has got a lot more growth going forward. So that was mine.
Carl Widger:Yeah, but I suppose we have the information now. So, where are. Power to make changes here, right? So, employers are, you know, there's a lot of people here who are employers, and you know how busy it is, and organizing financial wellness seminars, or whatever. Well, that's so why can't we come at it from that angle and say, okay, we're going to come in and solve these problems. We now know what the three core pillars are, so let's run some seminars, and, like, you know, it's a little bit like some of the ideas that we're having, that it's probably hard work to get that off the ground, but, but to endure with that, that's not hard work. The hard work is at the outset, you can put a program together, and then you can deliver it over and over again. So, I think, you know, we have a responsibility to listen to what surveys like this are saying,
Andy Hart:I just think there needs to be innovation around the pay packet, for example, ISIS via the pay packet, and just more financial products around the wages. So, I'm looking forward to new ideas to be launched in that space. That's what I'm saying. I'm sure some people are working on it.
Alan Smith:Yeah, that's a whole other conversation about naming protocols and definitions, pensions are boring, right? No, I get that, but working part time and doing, you know, doing things I want to do, or you know, renaming things in large corporates for the team, for the staff. Yeah,
Nick Lincoln:okay, good, good stuff, right? Yet again, I've been asked to do this. We've got people in here from around the world, we've already said hello to the Irish friends, we've got people here from, well, Wales, Scotland, South Africa, Chile, Bulgaria, Germany, anywhere else. Stand up if you're from any of those countries. This doesn't have an idea. Let me rest, and come on, that's amazing. Hungary, Hungary, Hungary, Hungary. No, no, we've got Bulgaria. We do have Bulgaria as well. We've got you, we've got you, Richard from Budapest. Fantastic stuff. Okay, so
Andy Hart:can everybody hear us? Okay, can everybody hear us? Okay. Okay, so I need to go louder. Can everyone hear Carl?
Nick Lincoln:He mumbled anyway.
Carl Widger:He told us backstage now, don't be shouting into the microphone.
Andy Hart:I think my mic needs turning up a bit.
Nick Lincoln:If he actually gave Alan's son, Sean, a lesson in how to open the door for us backstage. He said one job, unbelievable. Okay, right. Storyteller,
Alan Smith:topical tidbit. This is quite interesting. I need to sort of premise this, this sort of update, and share. Do you mind if I tell just a very, very brief story, just, just to get it, just to get it going. So,
Unknown:grab yourself a drink, a very long drink. It's story time with Alan Smith.
Alan Smith:We've had to work hard to shoehorn these in to the nuts in natural few more to come. Get on with this. I started a business in 2004 Could you believe? And when I started, and you had to come up with an investment solution, investment strategy. I was of the opinion right from day one that most IFAs, not as a one man band, most IFAs don't have the skills, the resources, the research, research budget to reach all the best funds, all the best sort of investment products that were out there. So I took, if you took the view early on that we'd outsource, so I mean, some of you who've been around for a while, I mean, I guess these things still exist in different formats, but I outsource to what are called multi managers, which is kind of the old version of NPS, and I remember, so the two favorite companies were Credit Suisse and Rothschilds, they had these out, and again, it looked really cool, really good, because you had these people, and they would choose the funds, you had all these institutional funds you never heard of, but apparently they were amazing, but in those days you don't even spend much time looking at the, you know, the OCR, the TER, the whole level of cost, or the headline thing, I remember it said about one and a half percent for fund management, which was in those days it was all right. What I subsequently found out, it was closer to 3% a year total cost. Once you layer in all the costs, so that's how I started when there was no real conversations about basis points, and like five basis points and 10 basis points here and there, right? The world has moved on a lot, and I was kind of joining the documents, and we had in our office last week, we had our quarterly investment committee meeting with my friends at Albion. I think there's one or two people from Albion in the room this evening, but we've worked with Albion for many, many years, and we went through this process, which was to look - we're looking at our existing investment portfolios, and we all. To look at, is there an, is there a better solution for, let's say, that for what it, for a part of the component, part of the portfolios, because we're now everything is roughly the same, really, but occasionally be a new fund will be launched, which does exactly the same use as the existing fund we've got, but it might be 10 or 15 basis points lower cost. Do you think we're always trying to drive down costs without compromising quality, and we went through this process to do it, and then it was then we had this conversation, and realized if you do a fund switch, a traditional fund switch, to save, let's say, the example that we used was a million pound pension fund, let's say, and if you can discover a fund that's 15 basis points, and again, I'm going back to the days, was 300 basis points was normal, but 15 basis points, well, on a million pound fund, that's going to save you 1500 quid, so you might as well, right? It's good. And then you realize that the way that I'm not saying all platforms, but the way a lot of platforms work is you sell one fund, it sells down to cash, and you repurchase it, and you look at the time lag between these selling to cash, I mean, sometimes it's four days, sometimes it's two days, but what we know is markets move pretty rapidly, and you can, you often get that markets will move 2% in a day, sometimes 1% of the day. So we did the sums and said, well, if it was a million pound pension fund, and you moved it during this fund switch to save 15 basis points, to say 1500 pounds a year, and you moved it in the market, moved during that four days, while I was moving from cash to be repurchased. You've lost 20 grand, so you've lost the purpose of reducing costs. You've wiped out the next 1015, years of potential saving, just because markets moving against you in that time. I just thought that was something we said to just leave it as it is for the time being, because, and I don't know, I've seen again, I don't know how every other firm operates, but I certainly know firms that just do a fund switch,
Nick Lincoln:you know, the concept of a beginning, middle, and end.
Alan Smith:Yeah, discuss, if you've thought about that, you just do
Andy Hart:fun switches. This is not even on the agenda,
Alan Smith:exactly. It is exactly, it's exactly the point. It's what do you want to mean?
Carl Widger:Yeah, I totally know what you mean, and imagine that's the example platform to platform. Imagine from insurance company to platform, so you know you can extol the virtues to your clients of, okay, we're going to move to a platform, it's a better idea, and we have all the added advantages of a platform, and then you send in the transfer request to the insurance company, and eight weeks later you're going, so where what date are you going to pick for the actual, oh, the date we got the last set of requirements? Oh, fantastic. And when did you get those? We got them day one. Oh, yeah, but we had other requirements, and we forgot to tell you about that, so literally they're picking out of the sky what the last date of the all the requirements are, and that's a very tricky scenario, I would say. And in Ireland, we need to be absolutely aware of that, because we found that you're trying, as you say, you're trying to do the best possible for your client, and everything on paper looks absolutely fantastic, but if this transfer situation is going to take, you know, 468 weeks, well, then you've got a big problem, and you need to be pointing this out to your client, because otherwise it'll come back to you, because effectively you're advising, and the client might have been out of the market for never mind three or four or five days,
Alan Smith:well, this for four weeks, money goes into the ether. Yeah, it's not in that fund, but it hasn't arrived in your fund. Yeah, even in a fund switch, but obviously coming from kind of legacy companies, that's a huge issue. Yeah, and I'm not sure if everyone's like terms of business and stuff covers that we'll do our best we can, but it's beyond our control.
Carl Widger:Yeah,
Alan Smith:I think it's a potential issue for some firms, particularly if you're doing it, you know, that's one thing, but it's outside your control, but an internal fund switch, we say,"Look, we found this other fund is exactly the same, but it's a good bit cheaper.
Carl Widger:Yeah,
Alan Smith:and it gets sold down, sits in cash, and then it gets really five days. They're usually T plus four is the current settlement
Ola Abdul:time. A
Carl Widger:really good solution that we found, which is not really a solution, it's just in like black and white. You'll have your recommendation letter in the client science at the bottom, and we all know that they sometimes don't read all of those recommendations. So, like, you have a box with initials beside it, and you make sure, like, for us, all of our advisors need to make sure they read that out and say, "Do you understand? Okay, please initial there, because that protects you, but you know it, it's not really necessary.
Alan Smith:Texas, but I still were living in, you know, the 1990s Yeah, really. I noticed, though, this.. I do think this stuff will change when people, but without going sort of down a rabbit hole, but tokenization of funds without putting.. I just put a link in our notes. I mean, legal in general. It's the first one I've seen that have launched a number of funds, which is tokenized. So, they sit on a blockchain, so you just immediately, so immediately, same time, you decide we move from that fund to that fund, providing to all the funds you want to use up there, instantaneous, which is what you, you know, that's the ideal modern way of having portfolio management and fund switches, as opposed to. Literally get it back, get sent to cash, sit there, then repurchase. It is archaic.
Carl Widger:Yeah,
Andy Hart:so did you use a tolerance level of if the fund is x basis points cheaper, we're going to make the switch, because
Alan Smith:you decided not to do
Andy Hart:it, because when they're at the market, you're right, if you go on the averages, the market's going up 75% of the time, down 25 times, most of the time,
Alan Smith:so it's going
Ola Abdul:to get,
Andy Hart:you can have headwinds, yeah,
Alan Smith:yeah, yeah, totally, right. You might get lucky and focus down, but you want to take that risk very easily to know about it, you to mitigate it, need to disclose it, need to just be aware about just there's loads of fun switches going on, and people haven't really thought that through, but been out the market for a few days, and I was looking at earlier this year, there's been times with the last 12 months with the Trump tariffs, the whole bunch of other things that markets have moved 5% in a week up and down, yeah. So, there's 100%
Carl Widger:yeah.
Ola Abdul:Okay,
Alan Smith:all right.
Nick Lincoln:Okay. I meant to say, at the start, Trappist, we're just, just so you know, we're revamping and relaunching our website, The Real Advisor podcast.com It'll happen the next week or so. It's a really slick site, and we're going to build out some more content on there. There'll be a forum on there, a gated area where Trappists can ask questions of each other, very easy to search topics that previous questions have been asked. There'll be a monthly newsletter, which will be a digest of the best of the podcast and other content. And in time, we're going to build out Trap Academy, which is a course, videos, scripts, what to do, what not to do, words to use with clients to help get, especially the younger people, into full fat financial planning, so you can have businesses where you just, you just love what you do, and it's highly profitable. So that's all coming. So, look at, we will be emailing you on that in the make sure you're
Carl Widger:on the email
Alan Smith:list.
Nick Lincoln:Yeah, that does help, right? So, I listened to a podcast this week. I can't remember who it was from, but it's on these changes to pensions and inheritance tax, which is coming down the line in April next year. Now, I know where we self-selected this group. This is the cream of the cream, I think the trapped, and what we've got this community are some of the best financial plans in the country. So, I know you're all over it, but these changes are going to be monumentally a ball ache to administer when they come in. I don't think en masse people understand quite what a pain in the ass it is. So, I put a link to it in the so-called show notes. I read a very good briefing note from Royal London on these changes to pensions and NIH from April next year, and you know it's going to happen. I looked at Polymarket yesterday, this peer-to-peer betting, binary betting database, really, and they say Keir Starmer is 70% likely to be out of office by the end of this year, but there's an 89% chance the government's going to go the full term to 2029 so this is not going to be reversed, and this is coming in, and this business of now, where if you've got clients with sort of five or six pension pots, perhaps, and they pass away after April next year, and the personal representatives of the deceased have to go to these pension companies and get valuations and work out the share of the inheritance tax that might be liable on that particular pot. The point you made about dealing with insurance companies. I think this is going to be a catastrophic, catastrophic situation. You get six months to settle the IHT bill. After that, you get interest charged at base plus 4% So, currently, 7.75 When Rachel Reeves brought in this change to the inheritance tax thing, she increased that margin by way from two and a half percent to 4% no one really noticed the cynic. Just, yeah, I mean, it's unbelievably complicated. So this is also an opportunity there, because in the past, when you're consolidating pensions, we all know what it's like, you've got to compare reduction in the year with pot A, reduction in the year with pot B, and if Christ forbid, it's 10 basis points more expensive, then you don't do the transfer, otherwise the compliance people have a hissy fit. I think now we're in a position to say to existing clients, and certainly your prospects, if you come on board with us, we are consolidating your pensions to save your family a shitload of grief down the line. This is the biggest clarion call for saying crack on with consolidating, and it's not about basis points and all the other crud that we have to justify. It's about making life easier for those you leave behind, because when you've lost a loved one, the last thing I want to do, if I lost a loved one, would be dealing with five or six insurance companies in the space of six months to try and get this resolved, and I've got this really strong belief that people don't realize what we want, the government haven't got a clue, that's for sure. So, guys, I don't want you think about this, doesn't apply to you so much, Carly, in your name,
Carl Widger:all the Irish are going to the bar.
Andy Hart:I wouldn't use the word grief, Nick, when talking about their loved one passing away. Save them a load of grief. Yeah, going through grief.
Nick Lincoln:Yes, you're saying extra grief. Yeah, extra grief. Yeah,
Alan Smith:double grief. Thank
Andy Hart:you, Paul. Thank you, Paul. Are you clapping me or
Nick Lincoln:Nick? I Me, oh, sorry,
Andy Hart:Paul, to justify switching to a decent platform that
Nick Lincoln:whole thing one,
Alan Smith:consolidate, but two, have with a platform you know you're able to deal with more, you switch funds before you consolidate, yeah, for sure, save the money, but the other thing is part of this,
Nick Lincoln:choose your platform. Carefully, you know, we write, we on this stage here, we've been lucky enough, through hook or by crook, to choose platforms that are really, really good, but there are some really rubbish ones out there, and he is
Andy Hart:Funman and Ola ready for the changes coming in April 2027 Anna,
Ola Abdul:yes,
Alan Smith:he was born,
Andy Hart:yes, they are ready,
Alan Smith:he was born ready, he
Andy Hart:was born ready,
Alan Smith:yes
Ola Abdul:sir, transfers. will address what you've talked about, so you don't need to settle down.
Alan Smith:Sure, yeah. All right, we'll come back to that. One thing is talking about pensions, this whole thing about inheritance tax coming in next year, and there's, it's challenging enough. If you've got sort of normal daily liquid liquid funds, there are a lot of pension funds across the country, which are wrapped up in property SaaS and SIPS. I mean, you try to sell a property within six months, it's
Nick Lincoln:going to be an actual car,
Alan Smith:and then it's like a fire sale, you're trying to just ship out, so you look, and by the way, if you go into the detail on that, it's the, it's the valuation at the date of death, right? So that, and if you, if it's just locked in the values there, and then it's taken you six months, nine months, 12 months to actually get rid of this, and the other thing about this, if you keep going down that rabbit hole, is often, particularly the SAS market, SAS sit with good property. It's the company operates, because, as we know, the rules changing about loss of business, property relief for small businesses, family-owned businesses. So, you can have a business which operates from a building, which, in the pension scheme, they're paying tax on the value of the business, plus tax on the pension, which, and the pension's main asset is the property through which they operate, and they've got six months to sort all that out. Good luck, it's a freaking night. I mean,
Nick Lincoln:if you read that rule, I read the Royal London thing three times. By the end, I was, I was losing the will to live. I understood it less after reading it three times than I did beforehand. They've got this, you've got the pension inheritance tax payment schemes being introduced. The whole thing is an absolute nightmare, and consolidate those pension funds now. Just, just do it all right. Legacy insurance companies, goodbye on a modern platform.
Andy Hart:Nick said, 'Do
Nick Lincoln:it. Done. Nick said, 'Do it. Nick said, 'Do it. Right. Okay,
Alan Smith:it's a suitability in case you die.
Nick Lincoln:Oh, Andy, so it's your monthly Berkshire Hathaway.
Andy Hart:Yeah, this is a repeating theme, the Berkshire Hathaway AGM 2026 I'm going to try and speak up. Was in Omaha a couple of weeks back. Did all of you watch it? Did any of you watch it? Are you going to keep me hanging, all of you?
Alan Smith:How long was it?
Andy Hart:It was five and a half hours. I watched it.
Alan Smith:Did you
Andy Hart:watch it at 1.5 speed? The new man in the hot seat, Greg Abel was there, and Jane Buffett also did a bit of an appearance, a key phrase Buffett picked up on. He said the market at the moment is like a casino attached to a church. He said there's more people in the church, but there's a lot of gambling going on the casino. He said these new products being created, five minute options, he said. Clearly, there's no financial use for these, apart from pure gambling. But I find it awesome to watch. I learn a lot about capital allocation, business risk, integrity in business, and the key mantra at Berkshire Hathaway, which I think we can all learn a lot from, is the ABC of business, or what kills a business, is ABC. A is for arrogance, B is for bureaucracy, and C is for complacency. So, yeah, the ABC is a very important thing to remember in business. Gentlemen, anything to add about the Berkshire Hathaway annual general meeting?
Alan Smith:Quite a quick question, how much? How much do they have in cash right now?
Andy Hart:A couple of 100 billion in treasury,
Ola Abdul:nearly
Alan Smith:400 nearly 400
Andy Hart:400 Yeah,
Alan Smith:400 billion. So that's interesting.
Andy Hart:They're gonna make a big
Alan Smith:question that's rhetorical. Semi, does Warren understand what's happening with these hyperscalers and these frontier AI models, and the fact they've committed to spend a trillion dollars next year.
Andy Hart:I'm sure he's following
Ola Abdul:it,
Alan Smith:and he's out of that market massively. Yeah,
Andy Hart:it's a bit of a
Alan Smith:one bet against him, to be fair, Warren. And
Andy Hart:yeah, I mean, he's been running that business for, you know, close to 6570 years, and he's retiring on a high, handing it over, you know, to a
Carl Widger:well, you watch all the all the annual general meetings. I think you've been there, haven't you?
Andy Hart:No, I haven't been there, but I've watched pretty much all of them since 19,
Alan Smith:usually longer.
Andy Hart:Yeah, can be longer.
Carl Widger:How does this.. how did he.. did he impress you? I
Andy Hart:mean, he was insanely nervous. Talk about a financial business hospital pass going into the shoes of Warren Buffett. Obviously, Tim Cook from Apple had the same similar sort of thing going into the shoes of Steve Jobs. So, Greg Abel was insanely nervous for the first hour or so, but then he loosened up a bit, and he's a, he's a credible dude. So, I'm a big fan of his,
Carl Widger:and Who's making the calls in. In making the, who's making the call about the 400 billion on in cash, it
Andy Hart:will be Greg Abel. Warren Buffett is now the chairman, who he speaks to obviously regularly, so he's on hand for a while, but who knows how long? Hopefully many, many years. I think he's 99 this much younger, eight this August. Anyway, yeah, so that's the Buffett story. Do watch it if you're very bored, and also the other Buffett, Buffett thing. He wrote a letter, sorry, an article 20 something years ago called the owner's manual, the Berkshire Hathaway owner's manual, and he set out 13 principles of the business of Berkshire Hathaway. It's a seminal document, I recommend you read it, and none of you probably will, but hey, onwards we go.
Carl Widger:Summarized CRO, we get AI to summarize it.
Nick Lincoln:Good stuff, good stuff. So every year, when we do Trap Lives, is our third one, we issue a number of free tickets to youngsters who are coming to this thing of ours. We call them the Trap scholars. There are a number here today. At your recent conference, Ola, you mentioned community and how important community is, and the community we have in this room, I think, is incredible, incredibly strong and incredibly giving. Will the Trapp scholars please stand up?
Carl Widger:his book out to the Trap scholars because you can't sell them. Stay standing, guys. Stay standing.
Alan Smith:Oh, careful sharp edges.
Nick Lincoln:Oh,
Alan Smith:well.
Nick Lincoln:Catch, catch.
Alan Smith:Where are we? It's gonna be a risky one. Scholars, no. Careful. Oh, well done.
Nick Lincoln:So, what I'd like you to do here, because we were all once youngsters starting off with this thing of ours, and we would have absolutely bitten our arms off to have the opportunity to have the interaction we have in these, in these kind of events. So, I'd like you, which they look at these young scholars, look at their faces, and if you can, in the break, go and say hello to them. Go and just exchange details, LinkedIn, whatever, because these people are there as sponges. They want to know how to do this thing of ours. Give something back. They're young, they're new bile, they're open to ideas, and I would say, I would say to our sponsors, this is the future, these are the people that you want to be. We're bringing new blood into this profession, it's not that it doesn't happen the way it used to do 3040 years ago, when you had sales forces coming, becoming ifas. We're hoping to bring young people in, scholars. If you align with Funman and Vanguard, these are two fantastic brands. Fundman Vanguard, go and speak to these people, is what I would say. Right, you can sit down now. Thank you for suffering the mediation,
Andy Hart:you Finally, a new drop,
Nick Lincoln:a new drop. Do it one more time, because it's gross.
Andy Hart:Yeah,
Ola Abdul:fresh meat.
Nick Lincoln:I had fun googling that. Don't search my history, Penny or Luke, right? Okey dokey, so storyteller, this is
Alan Smith:a quick heads up. I'm trying to think like the next two or three years, what this profession will look like without going all sort of boring and cliche around AI. We do know that machines will be able to do a lot of the kind of routine repetitive data-based work, so I'm already trying to think about how we can upskill our team, current advisors and or support and paraplanners. I just wanted to do a shout out to a lady that we had in the office a couple of weeks ago, called Amira, and the link to our website is in the show notes, it's amirass.co.uk Absolutely fantastic, she was teaching us about the art of communication, of rapport building, relationship building. She's worked a lot of huge companies around the world, young English girl, and it was brilliant. You know, the team came out of that and just said this was super, super helpful, and I think we all of us probably need to consider how we upskill as the value proposition changes a bit from being expert at technicians and doing, you know, moving money around and giving specific technical or pensions or tax advice to really upping our game, because a lot of people come into this profession without necessarily having a. Lot of rapport building communication, and the communication obviously goes two ways: it goes external and it goes internally as well. And my encouragement to people out there, particularly any business owners and senior people, is to look for other opportunities to upskill and educate and teach your team about maybe the more softer skills, the other things that we're going to have to, bottom line, we just all have to get every one of us have to get better at, so that this experience we had with this, this lady was absolutely world class, fantastic. If anyone's interested in engaging, then I do recommend you check out the link on our so-called show notes. Okay, and check it out, Andrew.
Andy Hart:I mean, it means nothing, but her website is world class. It's just worth checking out, her website, just for website design, if anyone's into that, we're kind of sets of
Alan Smith:things. If you're all about communication and you just shoot, web, it's well, it's really good. Yeah,
Nick Lincoln:yeah, it should be okay, right? 43 minutes in, shoot me. We've got two more points to get through. Ultra, you have a competition.
Andy Hart:Yes, have a competition. Mike's annoying me. I've already given away the best book in personal finance. I've given away the second best book in personal finance. Now, this is Nick Murray's book. This time isn't different. This is about 75 quid. Have you seen the thickness of it? So, I'm giving away a copy today. I wanted to order more, but they didn't arrive from America, so it's a live question, and it's fastest mouths first, I suppose. You get one shout out there per person, there'll be adjudicators. So, the question for the audience is, what is the average age of the track pack 64 It you're not an advisor, right? I'm going on wasted. Who said 53 Are you an advisor? Yeah, we got a winner. What's your name? Chloe is the winner. Chloe is the winner.
Alan Smith:What is it?
Carl Widger:What was the answer?
Andy Hart:The answer is 53.25 but we round it down to 53
Nick Lincoln:Okay, and now we have from our Irish Track Pack, some exciting news, big news. Brace yourself.
Carl Widger:Menace Ireland has been acquired by NFP and Aon Company.
Unknown:This
Carl Widger:has been crazy week. The news was officially announced yesterday, and I'm sitting here in front of this crowd of people, so I have the largest dose of imposter syndrome anyone could ever imagine right now, but yeah, we've had probably many suitors, like a lot of people, I would say over the last couple of years, some good, some bad. We'll probably explore that a little bit later on, I think, but NFP, this deal just was the right fit at the right time, and I suppose I had a couple of non-negotiables. Number one was the entire Mettas team. This is definitely a collective effort, and anyone who has ever listened to anything I've ever said, I've always been saying that it was a team effort. I was very lucky to have brilliant, brilliant people on the journey with me. So the whole team is coming with me. NFP is obviously not private equity, it's owned by Aon, and they're fully engaged in trying to scale a real financial planning business in Ireland, and for me that was probably one of the most important things. So our clients are remaining in exactly the same investments that they're in, exactly the same platform, they'll have exactly the same advisory team, we will have exactly the same investment philosophy, evidence-based investment philosophy. So, yeah, I know we're going to tease this one out a little bit more in the meat and potatoes, but yeah, I'm excited, I'm daunted, I'm a little bit nervous. I'm going in to head up their wealth and financial planning team, so obviously I'm not going to have a boss, and that'll be, that'll be weird. I think it'll probably be weirder for him now, to be honest. But anyway, yeah, it's.. we're, yeah, I'm proud. I'm proud of what we've achieved. I'm proud of the journey I've been on, and I think I am living proof that you can do this by doing real financial planning. I am the proof, so go do
Nick Lincoln:it. Okay, so if you could apply for holiday leave now, right? 47 minutes in, yes. We are moving to the part of the show. Shut up, Andrew. We're moving to the part of the show that they call the meat and potatoes. This is where we take a subject and give it a damn good thrashing. And the latest thing that has caught mr. Magpie's eyes is having the Trap Pack survey, which we've done our first one of. Had a great response to Storyteller. Tell us a bit more about
Alan Smith:it. Right, I just had this thought over the last month, I thought we've got this community that is an engaging community, we get lots of messages, we now get this email list. Why don't we just send out a brief survey? And by the way, you couldn't imagine the back and forth trying to organize this survey between the four of us. But anyway, we literally, we sent out an email with a Google form on it, we sent it out once to the list of people who are subscribed to our emails, etc. I don't know many people were on it, but we got pretty rapidly 440 responses, which is pretty high. I think there's
Nick Lincoln:that lanka.
Alan Smith:Yeah, well, this is what we're trying to say, you know. Love all these other consultants, whatever. But this is the idea, was this is like from the grassroots, it's from practitioners, us to practitioners. There's no other third party, there's no, we've got, you know, love all the product providers and the consultants, but this is like, ask you a bunch of questions, what's the vibe, what's going on, and it was pretty revealing, and so we're going to share some of the key takeaways that we raised from this survey that went out a couple of weeks ago. There was a number of different things, there was the usual stuff, and we're probably going to juice this out over the next few episodes, because there's conversations around AI about capacity management, about compliance, what else, about you know, winning new clients and lead generation. There was a lot of those things were coming up, but there was an emerging theme that kept, that kept, we kept looking at, because one of the things we asked was, we asked, you know, you didn't, it was anonymous, but people could give their names. We're not going to share any names, of course, but we had asked, Are you independent? Are you in a restricted firm? Do you work for a firm consolidated firm? And then sort of be able to sort of slice and dice the data. And forgive me, just when I read, read a couple of things, which I thought were quite interesting. We're going to then unpack this conversation in the next little while, so confidence levels independence on average 8.4 out of 10, pretty high consolidated backed advisors 7.1 gap of 1.3 points on a 10 point scale, so that was quite significant. Ask people about whether they thought things that were in terms of their work, was it better, similar, or worse over the last 12 months? Not one PE-backed consolidator firm said better, everyone's easy that same or worse. This is a kicker. Not one of the own business owners who sold their firms, but were still there, sold to a consolidator. Not one would sell to consolidator if they were to sell their firm again. The other thing is retention. What are some of the issues and challenges you've got? So, bring
Ola Abdul:it on.
Carl Widger:Let's go
Alan Smith:client retention consolidator-backed advisors are nine times more likely than independents to name client retention as their biggest pressure,
Andy Hart:nine times more likely.
Alan Smith:Yeah,
Andy Hart:how's that even work?
Alan Smith:Just, it's whatever the percentages were. The AI report told us. It's my brief intro. I'll give you all the data. It's impossible. Well, put it this way: 9% of the consolidated-backed people, 9% said it's an issue, client retention. 1% of independent said it's an issue, client retention. That's nine times. You get it with me?
Nick Lincoln:I'm with it. I'm going with you. Yep,
Alan Smith:and this I'm going to finish off with this. This is a quote lady who I won't say her name, an advisor whose boutique firm was bought by a consolidator a couple of years ago. She rated her year ahead one out of 10, and I quote, for me personally, having been bought by a consolidator a couple of years ago from a small boutique firm with a specific, well-defined niche, it's bringing clients along a journey that they haven't and wouldn't have chosen for themselves, that I thought was quite interesting. There's a ton of other data that comes from this, and obviously, as I say, it's from from the people from the trap audience. To be fair, our audience skews towards independent firms. If you look at the overall people, we have got what I call traditional wealth managers, consolidated PE-backed consolidators. We've got restricted, we've got quite a lot of SJP people who support the podcast, but the numbers were very, very telling in terms of how people are feeling about the sector. Work, and what they're doing, and with that said, I'd like to hand it over to Andrew for your thoughts before we get to Cop.
Andy Hart:So, I'm sure capital will never be bought by a consolidator, Alan. I need to be loud, this Mike's annoying me. Okay, so I went through the full survey, 440 responses, and to be honest, I've learned very little.
Alan Smith:He said to his best
Unknown:Andy, the ultra crepidarian.
Andy Hart:It's been a while.
Unknown:He knows about everything. Andy can't be told anything. His name is Andrew Hart, Andrew Har.
Andy Hart:Right. Thank you. Yeah, that's not been on for a while now. Joking aside, reading between the lines, there'll always be issues, obviously independent, restricted, consolidator, directly authorized, and the grass isn't always greener. You're always going to have overlords, you know, be that a boss, the regulator, a business partner, but all the numbers were pretty positive. I know you mentioned some discrepancies in the numbers out of 10, but they're still quite high. And we also earlier about the average earnings, again, we're very blessed to have these high average earnings, and remember that's the averages. People in this room are not average. Well, apart from Nick Lincoln and Chris Emmett, where's Chris? Is he still
Ola Abdul:at the pub?
Alan Smith:He's at the bar, I guarantee you. Where's Chris?
Andy Hart:He's probably not the bar. Yeah, so I thought the results the survey were very positive. Obviously, there was some anomalies within that, you know. I obviously love what I do. If you love what you do, you're generally never going to work a day in your life. I'm hugely pro this profession, so yeah, I thought it was
Carl Widger:passionately
Andy Hart:speaking to this fucking mic, anyway. The good that we do people keep doing what you're doing. Over to you, Nicholas.
Nick Lincoln:Yes, this is more Alan's thing. These kind of surveys and so forth jumps out to me, by the way, asking people
Alan Smith:how they're getting on. Just what do you think?
Nick Lincoln:What's the difference? for me? So I'm not saying I'm whiter than white, and maybe one day I will sell to a consolidator, but I really, as I sit here today, don't think I ever will do that. Okay, if I ever sell at all, so I want to get that out there. If someone will buy, if someone's got to buy as well, that's very unlikely. What I took from this was how consolidators, one of the, one of the things that came out of the server was that consolidators are not using AI barely at all in their, in their businesses, whereas independent business-owning IFAs are embracing AI, and this is one of the things I think if you sell to a consolidator that they, although in your case, you, the point you described, it sounds like you're not doing it, but generally the consolidator will come in and say, this is what we're doing, you're using our systems, you're using our funds, we do it our way, and if you're an independent business owning IFA, you can think, okay, I don't have to, I can do whatever I like, and if I want to play around with AI and get best of breed software from all different brands, you can do that, because you lose that with the consolidator, because they will come in and put their rules on you, and you know my son, the boy who's here, he has been acquired, his firm has been acquired by a consolidator, and you know it's there, they're coming in and they're putting in systems, and it's they're getting there, but it's not the best environment all of the time, and the people who sold the consolidator, you know, you, it's your baby now, and you've given it away, and you've got to sit there, keep your mouth shut, and just do as you're told. So, I think there's a lot of money talks, right, and I'm not begrudging people selling out and getting what they, they probably do deserve to get, but you know, I, it does for me, I've got to be careful how I phrase this. I just, you've been talking to your clients for 1020, 30 years about how this is how we do it, because we believe this, and then suddenly the consolidator comes in and completely, completely does things the other way, what I would call perhaps a more old-fashioned approach. And I don't know if I could look at myself in the mirror if I, if I went down that route, and the findings from this report do definitely bear that out, but in defense of the consolidator we have Della Vocci.
Carl Widger:Unfortunately, I'm unable to comment on this matter. No, no, no. Look, I've been through this process, right? So, I mentioned earlier on, we've, over the last few years, I have, over the last few years, had many discussions with various people, and it wasn't, I suppose, on the basis that I wanted to sell. It, but I wanted to learn, so I had, I had all of the conversations. Some of them were very brief. Some of them, it's very clear from the outset that the, you know, oh, you'll go into our portfolios and you'll go on to our platform, and not all the team might comment, but you know, so very, very early, you know, right, ruling out, ruling it out, but, but if we can, if we can bring this back right, and the quote you read out about that lady, who, who said that she was a boutique, she worked in a boutique firm, and that the clients were being brought down a road that they didn't want to go. Well, I don't, I don't know, I did not read the report, I'm sorry, but I don't know, is was was this person a business owner, because if she was a business owner, well, then it was up to her to absolutely establish the facts at the outset, if this was going to happen or not. So maybe she wasn't, and she's working for a far
Alan Smith:was,
Carl Widger:yeah, okay, so okay,
Alan Smith:so then
Carl Widger:leave, because here's the biggest ideas exchange group that there ever was. This is why we've got 430 different responses. Right, there are lots of great firms to go and bring your clients to, so that's the solution for that person. If you're a business owner and you come in and you're surprised, well, then what you do is you also leave, and I can tell you for a fact right now, if all of the promises that have been made by NFP don't come through, you're all going to hear. Did you hear Widger blew that thing up? And I have no doubt whatsoever that they are going to honor it, because they came to us and said you are the best at the financial planning business in Ireland, and that's why we want you to do it. We want to scale this, and a couple of other points: you're in a minority of one, Nick, if you, if maybe not right, but a small minority if your ambition is to never sell, and that's an erosion of value that you're going to facilitate in the business that you've built up, and if that's your call, absolutely, that's your call, right? But, but, but the vast majority of other people are going to, at some stage, want to take some value for the business that they have built up over a long time, and I think you know you can look at MBOs, perhaps you know, selling to your team, merging with a buddy down the road, or you can do something like this, and it's, it's then, if you're going to do something like what we've done at Metas, you'd be nice, naive to think that there aren't going to be systems and processes in place, you'd be naive to think that there isn't going to be extra compliance, where I now have to check if that's okay, if it can go out from a marketing point of view, whereas I always made the call, but that's what happens with scale, and I'm talking to a room, probably of an awful lot of independence, but I always had the vision of I want to scale this thing. I want to show the private banks in Ireland that this is actually possible, because they don't believe it's possible. They believe they'll build their AUM by selling bullshit stories about this investment portfolio and that investment portfolio. And now I have the platform and have the opportunity to go and do this, and I have no doubt that NFP are going to be true to the word, but NFP also have no doubt that if they're not, we all have a huge, huge problem. And to go back to, and I'm finishing this point, like my clients, I can, I hope they're listening, because I can promise them faithfully right now, nothing will change in terms of their portfolios. We're not all of a sudden going to become proponents of cryptocurrency and active fund management. It is going to be evidence-based investing. It is going to be in the same contracts that you're in at the moment, unless we tell you this is a better idea for you, which we have always told them over the last 12 years if there was something better. How did I transition the business to a platform model by telling them we have something that is better here, and we think it is, it is fit for purpose for you, and it is in it is in your interest. So, yeah, I think it's perhaps I get this a lot, you know. Oh, the consolidators, and there are there are good consolidators, and I said it last year, and I don't know if Rob Stevenson is here, but he slagged me an awful lot after it. I said, not all PE is bad. I've had all the conversations, I'm qualified to say not all PE actually is bad, but there are lots of pe that are terrible, so you can find different ways of doing
Nick Lincoln:it. Storyteller, tie a bow on this for us.
Alan Smith:I was thinking about this, I'm putting it in the context of me, my life, I've only. Ever had two jobs, I got the firm that I run now, but before I ran that firm, I used to work for a company called Standard Life, which are now called Aberdeen, and I got to, I guess. can see my wheelbarrow feelings for the days, those for the days with props signed by
Ola Abdul:the week.
Nick Lincoln:Sing a note, I was 21 the rest when I owned out the
Alan Smith:sun, I think, and I always try to explain this. Alperton is a part of North West London, which I used to drive my wheelbarrow up and down back in the days, picking up my props. But the point I want to make on this was, I always remember those days, that was my early learning ground, and I had a portfolio of about, I think, about 80 ifas that I was looking after, of all shapes and sizes, sole trader, one man bands, right up to that big national national businesses, and I know I did it for years, and I would get to know a lot of these firms really, really well, and again, I didn't, I didn't really have no kind of context, I'd never run an IFA firm, and never done anything, but I just would see how all the different organizations operated, and I came to the conclusion that the sweet spot, and this is just my opinion, everyone is free to disagree with, but there was a sweet spot in terms of the firms I was dealing with that were just nailed on, they were good, they were professional, they were really looking after their clients, and they weren't necessarily the sole trader. Now, a lot of things have changed, technologies moved along, but in those days it's very difficult to be a one man or one woman business, because you needed access to stuff that is very hard to do. It's easier now with technology, but nevertheless, sole traders weren't necessarily where it was at, and definitely the big national firms, which some of them were PE-backed, and some were just national companies, they were much more institutional in their style, and the sweet spot was this mid-sized company. In my experience, looking back at some of the great firms that I had the privilege of getting to know really well, who really inspired, encouraged me, you said about 4567, advisors see that sort of mid-sized. They didn't have 25 or 30 or 50 advisors, and didn't have one, and they were all highly professional, very sort of client focused. And I just, when I was thinking about setting up my own business, that's exactly what I wanted, wanted to create, and eventually kind of did create, but you learn a lot from I just think financial planning is so the sort of stuff we talk about is so personalized.
Nick Lincoln:Is there any link to the survey?
Alan Smith:It's about the consolidated back, the consolidated back firms, because the challenges, and I get it, and I have no doubt at all, no news run as I do, Carl, that you will continue to navigate that and protect your interest, and as a part, it's a partnership, right? Yeah, but what I recognized was financial planning, by definition, is so highly personalized, and so you can't always - it's not always that out of a box and paint by numbers and portfolios by numbers, you've got to be fluid and flexible, and that kind of mid-sized boutique firm seemed to be able to do that really well. The minute you get scale, and really big national sort of scale, and area that's P back to not consolidated. It's just harder, and I don't blame those organizations. They, you know, they don't want - they don't need a compliance risk, they don't need somebody going rogue. And it's much harder if you've got like 300 advisors or 500 or something. It's much more difficult. So, by definition, they have to do it for me anyway. That kind of mid-sized boutique firm is where it's at, and it really lends itself to do proper financial planning for proper clients and I'll just, I'll finish this up, because who knows, I really, I love the work that we do, I love the company that I work with, and my colleagues right now, and I hope to do it for many, many more years to come, but what I do know is, well, at some point I'll step away from it, who knows what the that succession plan will look like, but I think that the point you make is that companies are very different, and I do know the Robs and others in this world, and you, I think anyone who's in this room who's thinking at some point of exiting and selling, I really would say do prepare for this so far out, because this survey sums it up, is I wouldn't necessarily take the biggest check, because it's so important. I'm not going to spend my 20 plus years of my life protecting our clients from the dark side, as you call it, Nick. And then, you know, go off and sell my business and my clients down the road, and have, have any, like my colleagues now, or my clients have the experience that lady and a few others have said as well. It just wouldn't be worth it. I would much rather take my time, identify a partner that I would sort of get to know really well over a period of time, and migrate that over, you know, several years, probably. I think that's the, you know, the moral of this story. If you're thinking of selling a business at some stage, take your time, do your research, and find an ideal partner, partner that you are committed to, and. They are committed to working with you, Andy.
Andy Hart:You can understand from a business risk point of view, from the consolidators they're effectively running the franchise.
Alan Smith:Yeah,
Andy Hart:so everybody needs to do the same thing in exactly the same way. Does anyone in the room not shout out now? But if you know of any good consolidators, please do let us know. Anecdotally, it will be useful. Consolidator, UK. Someone's putting their hands up. Does anyone shout out a good consolidator?
Alan Smith:Madam,
Andy Hart:you shout out the name of it. Okay. All right. If you have any good stories about consolidating, because most of what I hear are generally bad to very terrible, which is unfortunate. So, hopefully there will be some decent consolidators that are going to be created in the next few years that don't just promise everything, do nothing, jack up the fees by three times. This is generally what I'm hearing. Well, I think can financial planning do everything against what the firm's built up, so hopefully there'll be some good consolidators coming out in the future. Maybe Trap can get a few quid, and we can
Alan Smith:do a deal.
Andy Hart:We could, we could set something.
Alan Smith:So, what's happening now? And again, this is just the intel that we see from Trap, and the messages that we get. There's a lot of advisors working for firms now. The thing is, if the owner is just banked a few million quid, it sort of takes the sting out of it for some of them, that the fact their clients are getting rich because they're sitting on the beach somewhere, maybe, but there's a lot of, you know, there's good advisors working in these firms, like that lady, and, like, I think you know, dozens and dozens of others, and what we're now seeing in this code is that the PE cycle, you've got good advisors who are now breaking away, and a lot of people, I see, I see a lot of this, and they're going to either joining other traditional full-fat financial planning firms, or increasingly the setting up by themselves, so you know we've spoken in the past, Andy, but your friends at Valley Path, for
Andy Hart:example,
Alan Smith:so there is.. it's quite difficult now to set up by yourself. There's all sorts of regulatory things going directly authorized as a challenge more than it has been when I slot set up, we probably wouldn't get permissions now, but we got grandfathered in
Andy Hart:disclosing me
Alan Smith:and Nick gone last minute, but I think that's the thing, and hopefully some of these peak consolidators who've done that and have done all those things, and they've seen that half their business that they paid for walk out the door, because people will not tolerate working for an operation that conflicts with their values and what they're trying to deliver,
Carl Widger:and you know they'd be mad not to learn those those lessons, right? And the last point, like we're all financial partners, right? So, so imagine this scenario: a client walks into your office, you've been working with them for 15 years, and said, "Hey, I've got an offer on the table for the business. I'm going to be able to stay with the business for the next couple of years. I'm going to be able to really scale what I'm, what I'm passionate about doing. It's something I've always wanted to do, and really, when I think about my goals, my dreams, and my aspirations, this ticks all the boxes. What would you tell them to do? So, if so, if this scenario comes across your desk after years and years of business, I don't know. I'm, I could never see that this whole dis in the consolidators. I'm like, surely it's, are we just been a little naive that this isn't on the cards, because I didn't think or want necessarily to sell my business. However, I knew someday I was definitely going to do it, but I was going to do it on my terms. So I think there are good options out there. I really do. So, yeah, that's my final.
Nick Lincoln:Thank you. We're getting that damn good thrashing. Thank you for that. We're not going to do Travis questions in this recorded element here, because we've got a 45 minute unrecorded Q and A session coming up, where you can just ask us in confidence and just share things with us, perhaps. So we're gonna go straight to what many people call Culture Corner.
Alan Smith:Yeah, culture corner, just sort of ideas and things that we come across. I'm going to share one, and it's a podcast, it's on Spotify. I'm one of these people, and by the way, there's one in three of these people, so there's about 80 in this room who sometimes who can struggle with sleep? Sleeping, I sometimes struggle with sleep at night, and you know, we talked to the pastor about being corporate athletes, and sleep is a foundation stone for any, you want to be successful when you're busy, and you want to be, you know, eating well, and all the rest of it, but getting good quality sleep, and I increasingly struggle with getting good quality sleep. I sometimes find myself waking up at three in the morning and not be able to get back to sleep, which is suboptimal. So, I, I was, I was introduced to this podcast called The Honest Guys, and if anyone's come across it, The Honest Guys, and it's this guy, his voice is just so, you know, makes you for sleep, it's just lovely, but I've got these little kind of hell. Headphones, soft, soft headphones, and just put it in, and he tells you these stories, and it takes you on a journey. Before you know it, you're fast asleep. Brilliant. Did it last night? Couldn't I woke up 3am last night?
Andy Hart:Adult fairies, fairy stories,
Alan Smith:adult fairy stories. That's kind of ways, but I mean, really lovely. Anyone who, I mean, I know you don't struggle this at all, straight sleep, but if you struggle with sleep, check out the Honest Guys, brilliant deep sleep. I encourage it. One
Nick Lincoln:of the benefits of being a sociopath is you put your head in the pillow and you're out, you don't care, you don't think about anything. Gone, gone. Okay, my culture corner, this is again like Alice, nothing to do with this thing of ours, but Graham Linn, I'm sure most of you know, has been through the grill
Alan Smith:mill,
Nick Lincoln:the mill, whatever. In recent years, you can grill mill, and he took the stance on men playing in girls' sport. Women's sports was wrong, and he went out on a limb, as did JK Rowling, and he was totally ostracized by the people he thought were his friends. Obviously, the showbiz world is extremely woke, and en mass, people turned against him, wouldn't talk to him, and the people that would talk to him would say, I totally agree with you, but I can't say it out loud, but he's kind of going through a redemption curve now, and he's interviewed on the Peter McCormack show two things I think what Graham Linn done has done and is doing is amazing, he's also a very good speaker, he's loquacious, he's funny, he's humble, he doesn't get angry, he's got every right to be angry, so just listen to that if you've got a spare moment. It's an interesting story, and it's a story I think that's going to have, and is happy, is having a happy resolution. So power to Graham Linn.
Alan Smith:Interesting,
Carl Widger:mad Ted. Yeah, my culture corner is burn the boats. I was attracted to this, the title of this, because a few years ago I had a personal trainer and I lost a load of weight, and he said, 'Now you gotta burn the boats, right? You gotta throw out all the old clothes that are, you know, too big for you now. Well, that didn't work out too well. But anyway, this one is by a guy called Matt Higgins, and he's a guy who struggled. He, you know, he had a kind of a difficult upbringing in Queens and New York. He then ended up in Shark Tank, right? So, he's the book is a million miles an hour. There's like tons and tons of stories about entrepreneurial successes and failures. It's absolutely fantastic. I think everyone would enjoy it. It's a great book to listen to in the car. I would say really good one.
Andy Hart:Okay, my Culture Corner is the Martin Lewis Money Show, which I don't normally watch, but the Martin Lewis Money Show live pension special. Did anyone watch this? Bricking hands up. Did anyone watch this? Yes. Okay, good. Quite a lot, leaving me hanging anyway. So, finally, the money saving expert is turning into the money making expert. He did a brilliant show about investing. You might not agree with everything he put out on that show, but believe me, your clients are watching it, even your top clients are watching it. And then he attacked pensions this week, and he did a great job, and as I say, we can try and convince people that Martin Lewis's voice is, you know, the only other person that's close to Martin Lewis's voice is Pete Matthews in the room tonight. Shout out to Pete for doing all the good work he does, but yeah, Martin Lewis Vanguard got a mention by one of the panel experts on the show saying if you don't want to make a decision about what you want to do with your pension, just stick it in the Vanguard Life Strategy Fund, and that I'm sure there was a big uptick in the Vanguard Life Strategy Fund after that. So, yeah, watch the Martin Lewis Pension Show. Thank you very much, Nicholas.
Nick Lincoln:Okey dokey, great stuff. So, that is 76 minutes of this trap. We're going to draw it to a close now. We're going to come back at 9o'clock for unfiltered, unrecorded questions and answers from the audience. I'd like to say some thank yous. I would like to thank Funman and Van Gogh for their support of the show. It's helping us progress and it's just a really great, great partnership. Thank you for that. I'd like to thank Amelia for being just a brilliant MC. She is, thank you, Amelia, and thank you, thank you to the staff here at two to nine. Really good to work with Ben Andrea on the desk, Andrea on the desk there, and Steph, the videographer, doing a great job for us. I love it.
Alan Smith:And by the way, just to say this organization, this is this is a charity, it's part of the international students charity, and every bit of money that they make goes back to help people who would love to go to further education, but family circumstances often can't afford it, so it is so all the money you spend a lot of money behind the bar, but quick story I when we were trying, when Nick and I came here to just see if we could use this space, they said, as long as you people spend money behind the bar, and we said that will not be a problem.
Nick Lincoln:Final thanks to the Trappists. Thank you very much for this. We love you. Want to say, thank you to my lovely wife, who puts up a lot of shit from me, and I love. Son, thank you to the trap pack.
Carl Widger:See you at 9o'clock
Unknown:Bye.
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