In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss
Links referred to in the show:
Take part in the conversation! We want YOU to suggest topics and questions you’d like the Trap Pack to answer. The best way to do this is to ask them here.
Help us to help you! The more followers we have, the more we can do stuff going forward. So please:
In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss
Links referred to in the show:
Take part in the conversation! We want YOU to suggest topics and questions you’d like the Trap Pack to answer. The best way to do this is to ask them here.
Help us to help you! The more followers we have, the more we can do stuff going forward. So please:
Welcome to The Real advisor podcast, t r a p trip. Please follow us and join in the conversation on Twitter at advisor podcast where you can suggest ideas and themes you'd like the truck 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 pilot track
Nick Lincoln:yes indeed dear Trappists Welcome back to what many people are calling episode 21 of the real advisor podcast te R A P trap my name is Nick Lincoln or listening and joining me are two of the three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the heart and Alan the story teller Smith but we have a special guest host for this episode as our fourth horseman called widow it's 1am in in Los Angeles Carl's on his knees somewhere in a in a side alley off Sunset Boulevard looking for knowledge or some some were selling him a Kansa Heineken we have Amelia Powell as our fourth guest host welcome, Amelia.
Emmelia Powell:Morning. Thanks. Thanks for letting me join you guys.
Nick Lincoln:No problem at all our pleasure, Amelia. Just so the TRAPPIST have a flavor of who you are. Tell tell the deer TRAPPIST a little bit about yourself.
Emmelia Powell:Okay, I entered the profession about three years ago. I work with my mum for Premier wealth solutions. I'm still on my exam course path. So bit with Alan hare going up the hierarchy trying to catch my mum who did all the exam routes. And during my journey, my husband is a sports professional and felt that there was an opportunity to offer advice to people that are in similar positions that we are and I launched the subsidiary band premier wealth solutions sports professionals. Otherwise in my spare time I'm a mum mum to three kids, busy life, work hard.
Nick Lincoln:Great stuff and you and your mother. You went to a very expensive recording studio
Unknown:Amelie Amelie on the show. she dedicates interrogates and soaks it up but she go Oh,
Nick Lincoln:brilliant, brilliant, our first guest host and our first guest host drop thank you to you and Jackie.
Emmelia Powell:Just got to smash it. Haven't you? Come and make an impact?
Nick Lincoln:That's one way of describing it. Definitely. Miss Amelia.
Alan Smith:Emily, you're really really welcome on the on the show. Great to have as our first guest guest co host it's worthwhile noting that as it's the 21st episode, Nick, we are now officially in the top 1% of all podcasts ever in the history of the world. Because remember that that's the thing. That's the thing that Chris you'll make Chris and the talks about? Because 99% of all podcast Chris Williamson talks about this 99% of all podcasts never get past 20 episodes so efficiently top 1% And you're here as well Amelia to to celebrate so Yeah, welcome great stuff.
Nick Lincoln:So just Just one quick close question your husband is was he a professional football player?
Emmelia Powell:Was he he is actually still not know what the joke is he hasn't got a contract at the minute so I suppose was is the right term to use but no yeah, he's still in sports. Okay, call it kick great, but not yet. 30 So
Nick Lincoln:pick the ball Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, I don't I mean, like my my team is essentially one is Watford which is a bit of a joke for all the all the wrong reasons. Okay, let's let's give this episode a topical timestamp with some topical tidbits and reviews firstly our reviews god I'm sorry
Alan Smith:Shambles oh my god, absolute shambles.
Nick Lincoln:Right. Mr. Hart? Sorry, give us three more high energy podcast reviews.
Andy Hart:Okay, the first review is from Phil seven through two three. The Four Horsemen are crushing it five stars, great insights, useful advice interspersed with lots of banter and invaluable resource. Next up is a must listen, wherever you are in your financial planning career. Some great insights and nuggets are very easy. Listen, Nick Platt, good friend of the show. And the final one is from Ray prints, not too shabby five stars. And here was me thinking that the old southern mucker mr. Lincoln had hung up his mic. You can't keep him silent for too long if at all. And here he is mixing up with three wise heads full of wisdom and advice or lined to help me financial advisors and planners get better at what they do, which in turn helps with our clients episodes 1112 A gold dust with Nick's if I was starting again, niche marketing strategy spot on, keep it up chaps and chap SS. So over to you, Nick, back to you.
Nick Lincoln:Great stuff. Thank you, Andy. Yeah. And Rio Ray, thank you for that very, very kind words. Okay, so this is a real straight into the weeds stuff as well. But we are we're all aware that about seven, eight years ago, final salary transfers, were for whatever reason, technical reasons, just very high relative to what they've been before. And that led to some good practice, but also a lot of bad practice. In other words, people transferring out of these games. So you might still get clients who've got these, these these these final salary schemes from years ago, and they've asked for transfer value. And they might come to you and say, Well, you know, this, this looks on paper, like a really big amount of money, it might be the biggest asset they own outside of their, their property, say, there's a decent website, I'll put a link to in the so called shownotes, the XPS transfer value tracker, which tracks transfer values of a typical DB member over the years. And it's just graphic, and you can just show to clients, you might think that figure of whatever it is 200 300 grands, a lot of money. But actually transfer values have fallen off a cliff, over the last couple of years, again, for a variety of technical reasons that clients don't really need to know, they just need to know you've told them, the transfer values have gone down. And it's quite just a useful resource to show people, you know, just if you think your transfer value is high, they really have plummeted. And it's an ongoing graph that is updated all the time. Basically, transfer values, according to this graph have gone from the typical transfer values gone from 270,000 pounds to 168,000 pounds. Wow.
Alan Smith:Wow. Yeah. That's interest rates and gilt yields. Isn't that predominantly?
Nick Lincoln:Yeah, yeah, it's it's collapsing gilt prices and rising gilt yields have is this this this is all linked to the stupid to the street, I mean, actually, is really they are, they should be rounded up this idea that you have to match future liabilities by going into guilts on DB schemes, which really made these DB schemes unaffordable in the early noughties. Insanity on stilts, but there we are. Okay, Mr. Smith, life after me.
Alan Smith:Life after me.com, mutual friend of ours, Helen, Howard Croft, an advisor in London, I mentioned this last week, quite interesting, actually, life after me.com is a digital platform where you can store assets. So you In theory, this is kind of, you know, in order to have a central place to store important documents, such that if you no longer around when people pass away, obviously, you can, you could scan in, you know, wills and trust documents or various other things. But increasingly, we've all got more and more digital assets. And not only mean not just kind of digital books, digital music, but things like emails, if somebody passes away, your family no longer got access to any emails, any past information that's held on a digital platform. And if you tell your email provider, that person has died, then they'll immediately close it down. So this is a methodology of storing this information. I've had a look at I haven't got any further than just looking at the website. But it does say it's all encrypted, data GDPR approved and so on. But I just thought was quite interesting as, as we all get older, as clients get older, just as some, you know, a useful place to store vital data such that the family isn't in a complete mess after somebody passes away. So worth having a look.
Andy Hart:I think the services will become more and more prevalent. And a lot more. Yeah, the moment there's not really much around this space, but I believe more and more companies will be getting into this space. Yeah, you're right. It's just how easy is it going to be to upload all the information then you're going to share the passwords with people that you trust and when you pop it then they're going to log in and yeah, it's it's interesting. It's a mess. Isn't that your your digital footprint post death is a complete mess. You know, Google Dropbox, two step authentication, all the passwords bank accounts. Yeah, it's it's messy. Best overdue, Nick.
Nick Lincoln:Yes, I looked at Helens link when she sent it through to us to the group that were in the peer group. And at least quite a few of these now aren't listed. That's the only thing and I'm thinking, okay, which ones are going to survive in terms of being profitable and so forth. But having a I mean, I was so my parents, and my parents were alive. And I saw them in Spain a few weeks ago, and my dad has written out all the stuff you know, he's very pragmatic. And this is called love the book of death. This is where everything is, but it's all handwritten. Very, very, you know? Yeah.
Emmelia Powell:I would say that my January Shouldn't this would be, I would love something like this. But other clients that we work with or maybe people that aren't as it literate, this might be a bit overwhelming. I know when I've sent out and trying to make things go more it in terms of cash flow or other like Docu signs and stuff, some people just aren't interested. So it might be sort of a slow burn as it sort of moves into later more it literate people without offending anyone there. But yeah,
Nick Lincoln:no, no, no, no. So at this point, well, I'm I'm guessing with your client bank, as it grows, Emilio is going to be younger people, because you've got you're working with sports people, right. So hopefully, that that that tech resistance point isn't too acute for your, for your for your client bank.
Emmelia Powell:No, no. Yeah. And I would say with generational wealth as well, it's much easier. Everything I do is digital, I don't do anything. It was probably an area that I was going to bring to you guys. What will the next generation of financial planning look like for? I think it's Gen Xers and Gen X millennials. Just from a personal experience, when I've recently built a house, I employ professionals through Instagram, that was where I went to that and look at people I didn't, you know, I'd go off word of mouth if there was an architect or QoS or somebody like that I would go or a lawyer, for example, I would go off personal recommendations, but generally well, there was a void. How I would vet somebody now as a social media profile.
Andy Hart:That's what Yeah, far from fritta, flooring, all that sort of stuff. It's so visual.
Emmelia Powell:Yeah. I go to see and yeah, they would demonstrate their work. Yeah.
Alan Smith:Interesting. Very interesting. You're adding value already. Amelia?
Nick Lincoln:Allen, you have you know, who called who is an example? Have you digitized your future? When you're not here?
Alan Smith:Have I know? Yeah. No, not at this stage. And I should do I should I should get around. I mean, we've, I've certainly come across clients situations where they have passed away. And we've got a few documents, but we certainly don't have all of them as as their advisor. And it's an absolute mess. It's an absolute mess. You got children, or grandchildren, sometimes absolute shambles. Do you know, do you know? Where do you know where dad's this document that documents? And I say No, unfortunately not. And we try to be more kind of engaged with clients. But yeah, it's it's tricky. And I think this, this is a generational thing. You're not going to get certain people certain clients just immediately to digitize all their documents, scan them, upload them. And then everyone's, as I say, I just think that the biggest thing is, remember a few years ago, Bruce Willis had a big argument with Apple about all the music that he's bought on iTunes. And they said it's not yours, even though he's paid for it. Because he wanted his daughters he I mean, he had like 10s of 1000s of songs. It might be different now with Spotify streaming, I don't know. But he's right. This is when they said legally you only renting Willis
Andy Hart:Allen. Yep. Bruce Willis.
Alan Smith:Why was Bruce Willis Correct? He had a big legal legal battle with Apple. It was and the whole thing was just about ditch ownership of digital assets after after you dead. So it's it's an issue is worthy, worthy of further exploration and debate. This is just a new tool that exists. It's not the only one out there. But it's probably a useful discussion point for some of your clients thinking about planning for life after
Nick Lincoln:all right? Yeah. Alan's put Ana's point out is not not the recording artist having a beef it said that the Joe Public who buy music, but
Alan Smith:Bruce Willis has just bought he just bought them he spent 10s of 1000s or hundreds of 1000s of dollars, or music on iTunes back in the day. And he just said, Well, what my daughter Am I want my children to own this. And they said no, doesn't pass across. I don't know how that eventually got resolved. But anyway, it's an increasing thing as more and more of our life and assets are digitized. And, you know, we're not going to get down the rabbit hole of just going to crypto and NF Ts. These are all digital assets. And you know, the transfer of ownership of those down the line. It's a mess. Google that.
Nick Lincoln:Okay, next thing on the topical titbits Mr. Hart quilters have announced some changes to their platform charter. Yeah. I
Andy Hart:mean, I don't predominantly use quilter. But I've got a couple of legacy clients on there for various reasons. They sent me an email the other day about their platform charges being reduced. And I thought they were quite substantial reductions. So I just thought I'd, I'd raise it here. Do we think that that's going to be a thing platform charges going down, I know Transact have been very proactive in this space ever since they've launched they launched purposefully profitable. And then they said, as we scale will reduce the fees and they've done that And and yeah, I just thought it was interesting to see that call to substantially reduce their fees certainly on the on the lower end clients that they're looking after. Yeah, on the high end, it seems to be same sort of fees. So yeah, platform fees really a nerve being reduced any points on that.
Nick Lincoln:I just leave it in there. So that the quilters are brought their platform fees down to Hargreaves Lansdown levels, they're still there, they're still expensive. By just a
Alan Smith:couple of points, when you've got a product or a service, which is largely commoditized, which platforms are really there's nothing, there's nothing that I don't see that stand out, saying, I don't mind paying a bit extra because this is so good. Then in any commoditized product or service, it's a race to the bottom on costs. And they're obviously coming up against some competitive pressure. Maybe others have reduced their fees, and costs or they're just trying to keep up with the market. There's more and more assets being placed on platforms, there's still I don't know what the numbers are, but billions and billions and legacy products that are still being moved across bit by bit from you know, all Phoenix life plans, etc. So there's still a lot, hundreds of billions, yeah, hundreds of billions. So there's still a land grab, there's still a lot of business to get after. And increasingly, your advisors are looking at costs and they're saying, well, you're more expensive than somebody else. So it's just I think that's there's ultimately comes a point at which they can't reduce it any further. You need to have a profit margin, you need to be reinvesting and improving your tech over time. So that I think they're getting quite close quote, unless you go down another another route, which is you see in the US, you see firms like Schwab and I think fidelity, where it's free, you know, custody and trading is free because they're selling you something else and they're making they're making a return on the cash, the cash holding, you could get towards that. But just just one thing related to this, I noticed in the so the only kind of newspaper I read is The FT at the weekend. And there was a report in the FT that weekend about this that they were really focusing on DIY investors. And obviously the the big daddy in that game is Hargreaves Lansdown, and they are considered to be more expensive nowadays. And so there was a I just thought it was quite intriguing that the report reflected this said a lot of DIY investors are moving off Hargreaves Lansdown because quite expensive. And the highlight of the phone called net wealth, which had heard it before kind of position themselves, I think it's the founders and ex Goldman Sachs lady who just felt that they could do a better DIY
Unknown:offering one that estimate the power of the dark side.
Alan Smith:And they are coming in with platform and funds at about 1% which I don't think is particularly cheap for no advice, you know, bundled everything together just give you a fund and a platform. And that's pretty much it as far as I can see. 1% I think we can, in certain circumstances, we can offer that ourselves with full advice for financial planning advice around 1% for certain clients. So yeah, just quite interesting how this stuff is being reported in the national press, maybe go,
Nick Lincoln:Amelia, do you? Does your firm and your mother's firm? Do you have a preferred platform?
Emmelia Powell:No, what I was actually going to ask the same of you guys then just listening. We tend to inherit a lot of legacy clients. And so we take on and I was going to ask how do you manage that you talked about Transact? That's come up to me before to do some reading around. But is there a one stop shop where you there's a comparable of, of platforms and different fees? And what do you guys use for that?
Nick Lincoln:Okay, I'll I'll leap in, I use a service called advisor asset, which is quite well known in the IFA community, you pay a monthly subscription, and you can put into there your client profile. So maybe your husband and wife, you know, they've got ices and pensions on our platform, and you put the amount in. And then you've just run it through advisor asset and it'll just list all the platforms by reduction in yield, basically, which is the first points to look at charges, but you can put in things like flexibility. So does this platform allow various decumulation strategies? Does it charge for rebalancing and advisor asset will filter actually basically you start off with the answer you want? And you like all these things? You do you fiddle with it? To give you to give you the answer at once, but it's very good. And it's about I can't know what I pay for it. It's a monthly sub, but I'd start with that one. But I think things like the Lange cat. They have the platform Analyzer tool, which is very similar, Amelia so you can kind of strip out
Emmelia Powell:I think the problem that that I find is, the more clients you have with different providers, there's a different level of service wherever you go. And that makes I know something we're going to talk about later but that makes any sort of report writing for that client particularly difficult when they've got lots of different legacy products with lots of different providers who all For a different level of service on their platforms. That's a frustration for me. So I know that you enjoy the simplification of planning. Nick and I spoke about that before. And in terms of efficiency of the business, I'm fully on board with that. But that's not how it plays out.
Alan Smith:Yeah, I just, I think you've got to have a platform strategy that applies to your business interests in the EU. That advisor assisting as you've described, I remember looking at a few years ago, it's it's almost back to the dark days of what used to be a course and Synaptics, whereby you looked at on a client by client basis. And, you know, theoretically, you can end up with 10 Different platforms across your client base, which is not the way I see things I see. I see platforms as as what do you call it? Andy plumbing, just plumbing in your business? Yeah, probably. And it's, and we've got a fairly homogenous client bank, we don't deal with, you know, people with 10s, or hundreds of millions and people with, you know, throttling safely, we've got a gent generic kind of client profile, that, you know, one or two platforms, you know, fit the bill. For most of those circumstances, of course, you get the occasional situation, you have to go a bit off piece, but we just believe in understanding that. So we do and we subscribe. Historically, we've subscribed to the Lang cat. And that gives us enough ammunition to say yes, by and large, for most of our clients, this one or two platforms is likely to be the best. And it's very deadly, relating back to what we just said, I think is very dangerous to look at the lowest look at cost as a key driver. Because Because really, there's not much difference between one or the other. I think service experience is what it's all about.
Nick Lincoln:Can I can I just clarify, didn't I so I do a platform due diligence once a year. And once a year, I feed in my typical client profile to your typical client age in their 50s Typical pension pot typical and just put it in just just the number crunching I don't do that on a case by case basis. Where I think where tools like advisor asset are good for things like pension switching, they have ancillary tools as well. But even that now, I think as long as I've got the charges for the seeding scheme, that I don't you know, do we need to know what the projections are at age 65? You know, five, seven and 9% and all that rubbish and compare I don't I don't know. Hopefully, we've moved on a little bit. Yeah. Okey dokey. Now Amelia, the CIA. I got this right. The CIA 100 and 50th birth, will they get to 151 years there's a lot of strife with the CIA isn't there? And why do you talk about that? I mean, it also I know you do some work with with the PFS? Could you would you mind just expanding on that first and then quickly talk and then then go into the the CIA 150th birthday?
Emmelia Powell:Yeah, course. So the relationship really was intertwined. I am an active member on the PFS for the Northwest region. I was kind of chucked in by my mom, to be honest. But she said she said this will be really good. We we get involved with a lot of the quarterly meats we do them locally to us. And I was born into the new professionals role along side Craig, who's actually left now Craig Stokes. And a part of my role is to help new entrants. It's not necessarily young, it's anybody that's entering the profession. Find a place at the table, connect with other professionals understand what events we offer, understand what the PFS can do to help and understand that we are they are a separate body to the CI complementary a lot of ways but that they can offer the services. So we went to the CI rep representing the BFS just to look at how the relationship can help each other. They the CIA do a lot. They do a lot of events, the 100 and 50th birthday was incredibly well organized. It taken a lot of organization. We went to one of the chair meetings on a run up for that. So I understand the work that went in. And they had quite a lot of guest speakers. There was a fantastic poet. I can't remember his name. But I will give you that for the show notes. I think we've got a copy copy of the poem he wrote. He was a proper monk. He was great. He was rarely rarely Northern, but beautifully written for the CIA. So it was very special. And then we had a few different there was a roundtable there was lots of different insurance Institute's Sunmo relevant to our profession as well. And piers Lynnie was one of the speakers there. He gave a great off the cuff. This has been my life. This is where I think insurance institute need to keep up he talked about AI and the advancement in technology. And he was kind of one of the examples he gave and if I don't relay this peer sorry, as well as you did, but he said car insurance well will that be in 1020 years time, well, he was going to be driving cars. So while you're going to need car insurance, and he just emphasize that this is going to be fast, you need to keep up, if you're left behind, you are going to be left in the dust kind of thing. So he was great. He's so inspiring as a person who's done incredibly well, x Dragon's Den. So yeah, I try and get involved with both professional bodies as much as I can. I don't know if you guys have any younger new members to your team. I think you've got Olivia Allen. Did you post? Olivia? Yeah, yeah. So would you guys be chucking your younger members of the team towards the PFS towards the CIA to get involved with these kind of professional bodies? And if not, why?
Alan Smith:Short answer for me is yes, yes, we would. Historically, we've always been members and subscribe to these professional bodies. We were we were kind of running in the old days. And sort of before your time, I suppose Amelia, there was the Institute of financial planning the IFP and it was such a great learning ground. I mean, I think I think all of us on this call, participated in that run by an amazing guy called Nick can who sadly had a stroke some years ago, but there was a period of time, it was just a place to be and I learned so much about this concept of real financial planning.
Unknown:Grab yourself a drink a very long drink it Storytime with Alan Smith.
Alan Smith:No story, really? It was just I think I think all of us did. They were used to the IFP conference down in Celtic manor in Wales was the sort of annual pilgrimage that we went to. And there was just, it was a kind of foundation of a group of inspiring people. And, you know, people like me have now sort of come through and are the more mature veterans. But in those days, I was just a young guy trying to trying to learn things. So we really embraced that. And we learned about this concept of real financial planning and building cash flow models and all that sort of stuff and the PFS, were always in the CIP, a much more kind of technically driven as, as I saw it, you know, you have to get, that's where you got your exams. The IFP was part of the, what do you call it, the body that did the well, they signed off the CFP license, which obviously is a global certificate and financial planning. The PFS sort of won, they won the game because they went off to the I think it's called the Privy Council. And they captured this qualification called the Chartered Financial Planner from under the nose of the IFP. Anyway, it was kind of if you ever watch Monty Python, in front of Judea stuff Janae. And Judy, as people front, it was a bit like that. And then ultimately, we as a business had to choose one one horse to ride I suppose, because we ended up being dual members of both, we had to do our annual, you know, our CPD and this certificate and stuff for both of them. Eventually, we said, You know what, and the IFP kind of got consumed by ci si. And at the time, that to me just seemed like a much more kind of technical liberal about the, you know, complicated, options tradings or something like that was a lot of the stuff I'd read another have improved a lot since then, and much more embracing the financial planning. So we've gone down the CIP Fs route, all our team, the appropriate members of our team are members of it. But it's a useful reminder actually immediate because we probably don't go to as many events as perhaps we should do. And it's probably a great place to meet nowadays, meet in person, younger members of the profession, younger members of my team will probably benefit a lot from just getting together with like minded people like yourself, just sharing thoughts and ideas. So yeah, well,
Emmelia Powell:yeah, and it's, I suppose it's development like developing those because I know from honesty, people see them as a CPD exercise. They go, they get their hours, they walk away, and it's making sure you can take some of this full fat financial planning, you can take some of the downtime, some of the networking, some of like the collaborative working where you sit, and that is what I'm pushing for. I find them relatively stiff at the moment we go, we sit there we listen to the talks, and we're losing that interpersonal bit, which is the value where the likes of me that are newer to the industry, interrogate the likes of you and sit and ask you all the questions that I want to so yeah, I'm definitely trying to help and support that
Nick Lincoln:it's the age old thing isn't it whether with with conferences, Amelia that the conferences are generally okay, some are better than Andy's you know, is is is is one of the better ones if not the best one. But it's the stuff in between it's that breakout sessions is when you have a cup of coffee or something, you know, and then you talk you go and seek out someone in the room you kind of admire from a distance and just just get a chance to pick his or her brains. That's that's the depth was sitting down in the auditorium part is can be quite, quite tedious, I guess. I guess also your advice. Would you be involved with next gen? That would seem to be gone.
Emmelia Powell:I love next gen. That's where my journey started. That's where I am pushing Nick through as well. He's doing his exams, not quite aggressively as I attacked my exams, but he's doing exams. But ya know, my whole journey started with next gen. Actually another incredible financial planning firm, clear court, Jane Gao, she runs financial planning business with her daughters. When we originally started off, she gave us quite a bit of advice. And Adam Irwin had come in and given some training. And that was a career. That's how they did their career progression and got their diploma. So I contacted Adam, and I mean, I couldn't I could not fault them. They have grown the business from strength to strength, their offerings there. I was just watching the other day. Dan, I think it's Graham, his last name, had done a few YouTube clips of social media and
Nick Lincoln:he does, he does the podcast doesn't uh, he interviews people. Yeah, he's just,
Emmelia Powell:yeah. And he's so he's so cool. You know, he knows so many technical advances and all these apps and there's just such a wide offering now for so many people that so I am also going to their I think it's conference, their award ceremony. Are you guys gonna go?
Andy Hart:Yeah, it's time to return. Next week. Yes, now? Yeah. Three days. 10 days? Yes, it's next.
Alan Smith:So apparently, there's an award for best podcast the week. Yes. Don't forget to vote for us.
Nick Lincoln:You're a you're a big influencer within next gen. I wanted to get influencing. All right. And the next gen listeners, it's the best place ever and vote for us. Okay. Yeah,
Alan Smith:we love next year is Friday. They
Emmelia Powell:are. Yeah, yeah. I'll be there. I actually got shortlisted for an award too. So kudos, guys. Oh, wow. Brilliant.
Nick Lincoln:Brilliant. Okay, so you met So you met piers Linney. And you were amazed by his his his talk at this. The CII birthday. Following on from that, and this sort of AI theme, which Mr. MAGpie can't get rid of at the moment, it's stuck in his beak and just won't be pulled out. Mr. Smith. You had an AI workshop that I believe was interesting.
Alan Smith:You don't throw this together? Do you? This is all planned and organized. That's a beautiful segue. And my, uh, my you just mentioned my very my now close personal friend, ex Dragon, Mr. Piers Linney. The last episode that went out last episode of trap went out. It went out on the day of an AI workshop that I was involved in. And piers Linney was involved in and he was co hosting it together, the guy called Alex Shukla, who I've known for years turns up and the heart knows him as well. But there you go, small world that I went it is, of course, it's the current theme. It's the buzzword, everyone's talking about it. But I think there's a reason that everyone's talking about it. It is it is transformational. The if you spend any time just having a look at the what exists currently, what is likely to exist in the next the next sort of few months. Really, it's it's very interesting, and you can't really avoid it. If you want to be successful going forward. So it's this is a tough, it's a big thing for someone like me to say, I mean, I've been in this, I've been over 3035 years in this business. I've attended countless conferences, workshop, workshops, you know, days learning learning opportunities. I would say a may have recency bias, but I would say this was the most impactful day I've ever had. I just think it was just an absolute, you know, mind blowing, I kept on sort of shaking my head and go, Oh, my God, my God, because this stuff they were showing and demonstrating. We don't have time to go into it right now. But it was absolutely fascinating. It was amazing. And as a consequence, there's a lot of buzz in the financial planning community about this. Because of all the professions I think this is one week and really the people who get behind this and embrace artificial intelligence can absolutely leap forward and tick tick. There's so much I mean, Amelia, you're learning this now we will talk about it. There's so much just grungy and gunk in our business are just old fashioned, just manipulating data and looking at boring spreadsheets, which the machines can do that a fraction of the time with a high degree of accuracy than any human can can do. So if it releases us from the you know, the real the sort of the grunt work and frees us to do the stuff that we all love doing and clients frankly prefers and enjoy it more, which is the human side of it. Then fantastic, why not embrace it. So we are there's a plan to put together another full day AI workshop specifically for financial planners. So I will obviously if anyone's just follows me on LinkedIn or Twitter or via via this. This podcast, I'll be posting information about it. I've got a meeting later on this week to agree and discuss dates and opportunities and So anyone who's interested and get in touch and get along to that day, okay.
Nick Lincoln:Okay. Good. What's the final topical tip that we have? Mr. Smith?
Alan Smith:Yeah, just on the subject of you know, in person live and in person events. My other podcast, my award winning podcast, this is the soon to be award winning podcast, my other award winning podcast, bulletproof entrepreneur, check it out. We are doing a live and in person event first I've ever done it 26th of June, central London with another close personal friend of mine, Henry Dimbleby, who's the founder, obviously part of the Dimbleby going broadcasting dynasty. It also the founder of Lyon, the fast food chain, who has an exits last year for 100 million pounds. He and I are going to be having a sort of fireside chat conversation podcast episode live in person expecting over 100 people to be there. So if you are interested, and you're in London, at the end of June, check it out. You're very welcome to come along.
Andy Hart:That was gonna be Alan, is it homegrown?
Alan Smith:Yep, homegrown, Private Member's club for entrepreneurs. Nick and I are both members.
Nick Lincoln:This is true. This is very true. And do less I've kept a log over the last few months, you've actually got 3648 close personal friends. How do you how to get in front of just that's just it? Right? Okay. I think I think we've given this topical tip. It's a damn good thrashing. And it's time to move on to the meat and potatoes of the show. Amelia, you're valued as a guest for numerous reasons, one of them, which is that you bring a youthful perspective to the show, because we're old, we're old lags, and we've been at this game for a while. And you are going to have some questions addressed in the meat and potatoes, things that are front of mind for you as you as you pursue your journey. And the brilliant thing about this this grand professional financial planning or full fat financial planning, I like the way you use that phrase. That's that's one to cling on to. So three points that you raise global equities, number two, report writing. And number three, the D cumulation. Phase in retirement, which which all of these in their own way are massive. And we could probably do a whole meat and potatoes on each section. But we're going to address these as we go along. Now just forgive me, because I'm going to read out what you put in. Yeah, these are your words, not mine, your email vomit, your word vomit, you just typed away. So global equities index tracking got it simple wealth, inevitable wealth. The Nick Murray book that's that's client facing refers to five core types of equities to be included here. value growth, large cap, small cap alternative, blah, blah, blah. When you refer to this has been the wealth creator for clients. And 100% equity invested with with a small bit in cash from reserve funds. How it's an easy statement to agree with, but how would you go about doing that? How do you find those funds or fund I'm left in the dark? I'm being you and me. I'm left in the dark. What basis? Are you selecting funds? What platforms do you use? What are your criteria for selecting? And what do you do with CGT ICER, allowances, rebalancing and so forth. My god, there's just a myriad of questions off there. Just coming back to the main theme of this first point in the meat and potatoes, the global equity, you know, how do you find the funds or fund? We've all been on journeys. We've all you know, I've been an IFA since 2001. Alan's been an IFA 2004 And Andy was once a polyester suited mortgage advisor reeking of desperation, but he's Have you got your advice. I'd be beside off now. Andy? Yeah,
Alan Smith:I've got my Yeah. Capital training
Andy Hart:called with advisors, those cast.
Nick Lincoln:A very good, very good, yeah, he's
Alan Smith:got he's got overconfident advisor status.
Nick Lincoln:Yeah, that's not good on there. In our in our journeys, we've all sort of made this this this the we've all been down, it's remarkably similar, actually kind of progression where you start off with thinking that you're going to be a fund picker. And that, yes, you want to have you want to have a portfolio of funds, we add your global small cap and maybe your you know, your value funds over there and have some emerging markets. They used to be these things called Brick funds, Brazil, Russia, India, China, which were the kind of really cool emerging market funds about 15 years ago, and you'd have portfolios. And then then after a while when you realize that financial planning is front and center, and actually the financial plan determines the level of growth that clients need to get on their saved pots on their capital. You start thinking actually as long as the clients pick up the broad market returns. This this whole pursuit of alpha and outperformance is is utterly irrelevant. And then you tag onto that the behavioral side okay, once you once once you accept or once the clients accept they need to pick up the book market returns and we're not going for outperformance. Our role as financial planners is to make sure clients are always invested to pick up those returns because market timing dipping in and out is a surefire way to poverty. You kind of just you refine it, refine it. And I Yes, I mean, I really have a simple soul. And I really have simplified my, my investment proposition now to use a horribly overused cliche I, you know, this is not advice to anyone listening who's not in this thing of ours, any members of the public who listen to this, I basically now for most of my clients have a one fund solution won't name the fund. But I mean, this one fund that gives massive global exposure has lot value exposure has a small cap exposure has emerging markets has about 13,000 of the great companies in the world in it. And that's what I use. And it's it's passive, I guess, there's no staff on manager running it. They just buy world markets, they buy world capitalism, they buy everything that we spend our money on every day. It's like the shopping list fund. Okay. So I said to clients, if you go into this fund, everything you spend your money on, you now own a fraction of that brand in this fund. And every time you spend money there, you're driving up there profits and dividends, you're just buying the world market, don't sweat it. But it took me an awful long time to get there. And I think you've got to be relatively self competent to go to clients and say, Yeah, this is our investment proposition. It's not particularly important, actually, the plan is important. But if you're interested, this is the fun, go have a look at it, if you want to. That's what I think that's
Emmelia Powell:how I shortened that whole big word vomit, is I get the theory and I agree with it. I agree that that's where value is, that's where growth is. That's how you keep pace with inflation. But implement it, especially somebody that's going through, you know, I'm I'm doing report writing, I'm trying to figure out the platforms that I like, I'm trying to figure out my way of doing it. That is a big statement. And that then comes with lots of unpacking, like I said about, if I'm taking this into managing it myself, and not using a discretionary fund manager, which we may or may not do with other clients, I then take on a lot more responsibility. And that's how I need to almost learn how that is done. I don't know whether the platform's do all your CGT and use those allowances or your ICER allowances. How do you navigate that? Because to me, that just looks like an admin headache.
Nick Lincoln:That's a that's a that's a, that's kind of a different put. So the first point is, how do you pick? You know, are you are you asking how do I justify if I go to if I go on this one fundraiser? So I'm not suggesting you will, but if you did, how are you asking? How would I justify that?
Emmelia Powell:No. So once you so as your confidence grows, and I understand equity, okay, so I figure out a way and I find my fund, but then I'm taking this on so every year, I need to make sure that I'm using my allowances, I'm using my CGT I'm using my A do you actually manually do this or do the platform's do this for you? I might seem really naive here. But this is just not something I've experienced because we've not had products where we've needed to do that because they've been pensions or so forth.
Nick Lincoln:I would when you're when you're doing your annual platform, do due diligence or however often you feel you should do it. But annual is more than you want to make sure they've got a competent Capital Gains Tax Calculator, working capital gains tax calculator, that's always been a key driver is now even more important, obviously, because the CGT allowance is basically miserable going forward. Again, not advice to anyone that's listening but you know, Transact have a really I think it's really good they will Transact will tell you what the pregnancy GT liabilities are. And then once you've sold out of the various funds, they will give you the CGT calculation, and it's all online, but some platforms. I mean, I'm not going to denigrate, because they might have been better, but I know ones, you know, platforms that use the FN Zed underlying software, which has a good deal of them that I've had some ropey CGT experiences so So absolutely, I use a platform where I'm confident the CGT counts are pretty accurate, Amelia and that's that's that's a big driver for me and just tying it into the one fun simple philosophy, you know, one fun to to fuel all the pots. If you've got one fund, it makes the CD T calculation a little bit easier, because you're not working it out over five, six different funds. But yeah, absolutely. Make sure the platform that you use that you're you're comfortable with has a functional CGT and each ever thought on that.
Andy Hart:Yeah, I think is the exception, not the rule. The platform's have a decent CGT calculator. As advisors, yeah, we can get ourselves in a bit of knots actually looking at CGT arnova. I've had a couple of phone calls with the unit recently about some of the changes that are coming in and how does it play out and stuff? Yeah, Transact have a has a great CGT calculator and you can input all of the purchase values when you transfer assets across. So you need to get that from the provider that you're leaving from. Yeah. The other question you mentioned, I mean, I similar to Nick have been on a journey with investment management. I mean, luckily, I only spent a year of my career picking funds. And then some Brightspark said to me one, and you can see David Jones from dimension will be able to help you out. And then I ended up in my polyester suit in Downing Street in Mayfair sitting there being educated about investments with David Jones. And he was telling me some crazy things like, let's say, a village fete, and you got a guest the weight of the ball. Did you know that the average would be closer than all the individual guests, you know, just sort of crazy thought experiments. I was just sort of nodding along to anyway, I went on the courses. I think there's a two day course that they ran. So I'm I predominantly use Vanguard dimensional. I mean, I'm not averse to using providers like Blackrock like LNG, on their sort of HSBC on their sort of index funds. But I find that Vanguard dimensional, do all I need as such, massive fan of Vanguard massive Anna dimensional, you know, just thought sort of the ethos and the sort of principles of the companies. Yeah, so I don't know if that's giving you a bit a bit of an insight. But yeah, overview, Alan.
Alan Smith:Yeah, you, you mentioned outsourcing to discretionary fund managers, as that's I guess, all of us midwife, certainly, we've done that we go. That's a new one that's that lasted a bit too long. What you find is, over the years, that's, that's a nice, that's kind of an elegant solution for the advisor, because that's what we used to think, you know, we'll do all the planning and advice and anything else, but we're no experts at the investment management piece. All these sort of shops suited, you know, people with double barrel names, they will be great at it, the reality is, they're not. And so we explore but we're on an evidence based basis, analyzing what the actual returns were, once you layer in all the different sort of costs and charges, it doesn't make sense. So therefore, you've got to work out and I agree with you, Amelia, you've got to have a kind of an elegant, workable solution. Because if you begin to bring this in house, and suddenly you just running yourself run in circles trying to do sort of portfolio management on a client by client basis, that's not gonna be workable either. So you need a structure and a strategy. And you mentioned that already. I've mentioned on this podcast before, content, I think the best kept secret in investment management contact dimensional fund advisors and asked to go long in their two day foundations of investment conference, you're going to it will blow your mind, you will learn so much. And they will guide you and help you now beyond that as a number of different solutions, you can do that in house, you can build this in house, you will get confidence of more and more confident as you understood it. There are also a number of there are a few, not many high quality outsource discretionary services timeline being one of them timeline, often broadly similar investment propositions to ours, they use dimensional, they use Vanguard they've got you know, if it appeals to you, the ESG versions of the portfolios don't see anything, Nick. And it's all super low cost because they've negotiated institutional terms. So that might be a sort of at least a stepping stone, you know, speak to someone and you know, other discretion managers do do exist, but they're worthwhile exploring. But it's a journey you go on and I think all of us you end up with a simple effective low cost sensible solution but you've got to be confident you can manage it in house so if if Ocelot can do it then you certainly can.
Andy Hart:I'm so pleased I'm so pleased that a year into my career, I turned the entire active management industry noise off and then I could focus on obviously exams financial planning, building a business marketing, you know, client focused stuff I mean, Jesus Christ I dread to think how much time is wasted and add zero
Alan Smith:but I used to show up but yeah, you got you go to a go to a presentation that's you know, x y Zed fund manager with their views on you know, the global equity markets and whether the direction of the dollar sterling is just utter utter nonsense. And my God is just such a waste of everyone's time. So if you meet as you say, I love getting I get these emails, you can just come quickly press Delete, don't need to think about it anymore. Because you know, we've, we've found the secret sauce as much as it can exist. There's nothing's perfect, but it's the least bad option.
Andy Hart:The worst thing about this conferences is at the end of the talk, three or four people would ask like a genuine question. It's like the the person just lied on the stage. And now you're asking them a serious question. I mean, are you are you insane? Like just get out any way.
Nick Lincoln:Yeah. Yeah, I mean I subscribed ameliorated some some newsletters from from wealth management firms just for the giggles really, because yeah, they come through a week. And they go on and on and on about this stuff, I think it's some poor sap is actually sat down and gone to Fe analytics and printed off all these graphs and really thinks that they know about the China macro widget sector rotation into value.
Andy Hart:And what happened that week, I mean, ranged, it's, it's back to nuts. It's amazing what someone will think when their salary depends on it.
Alan Smith:And yet, but the vast, the vast majority, from what I've seen of money is managed on that basis with those people who think they've got a view, which as we said, last episodes upon before, there's still you know, at best 20% of investments is managed under sort of embracing the philosophy that we all embrace. So it is a differentiator. And I think, also, if you're not quite there yet, on that strategy, immediate, it's a very powerful message to your clients, it first of all, it would theoretically significantly reduce their costs. And it's a much more thoughtful, you know, the word they use the phrase, evidence based, but it's, it's the sort of thing that the smart people are doing, you know, I can say, there's no Professor of Economics, people who already understand this, who outsources their own personal wealth to discretionary managers to ask them sort of play the markets, those with kind of academic rigor in their careers, and the history and the research, they embrace this stuff. So it's almost like you're inviting your clients into the secret society of Smart Investing. And I think it's a very compelling message.
Nick Lincoln:I think it was Jeremy Siegel, who said the act, journalists write about active funds all day, and then by nightstick their money and passive funds.
Alan Smith:In fact, just linking us all talking about my reading, reading at the weekend, the guy was his name's Stuart that x is what was the guy but he's HSBC. HSBC, the guy who writes a monthly column and the T and he wrote it this that Stuart cookie, I wrote it this weekend. And the headline is, and this is a guy who's spent his entire career in active management headline is active management doesn't work. So that should be good enough the rest of us.
Nick Lincoln:Okay, close question, Amelia. In the interest of time have you investigated dimensional at all?
Emmelia Powell:I am speaking to Elliot Yeah, I was meant to go on their two day course in June but I had a few things crop up so I couldn't get down to London. So I think I'm going to go on one in a few weeks time or a few months time
Andy Hart:you were busy building your house.
Emmelia Powell:I'm busy be busy with lots of things I've booked to come see you on DC event not disappoint? Me. I'm gonna like that free ticket went within seconds. Yeah.
Andy Hart:All right. Great. Thank you. Appreciate it. No problem.
Nick Lincoln:Yeah, there you go. You've got you've got someone coming to your
Andy Hart:I've actually sold out of harm. I've got 10 reassuringly expensive tickets left if people really want to go and you know, hit by FOMO. So yeah, I've sold out from London. So good. Sorry. Back to you, Nick.
Nick Lincoln:Well, Diana Ross, brilliant. Really. Just you mentioned rebalancing. I mean, I get that sweater. I mean, I mean, I rebalanced once a year. There's the evidence saying that once a year is probably okay. Some platforms now will do automatic rebalancing for you. So fundament, we'll do it on a tolerance basis, you know, if that if it drifts off by whatever parameter you say, I think 10% is that leave, don't sweat it. It's most of what we do. And I'm learning this as well. When we started, we think it's everything is science I've got with exams, this is all hard stuff. This is happening. Most of what we do actually is art. You have to know the science, you have to know the rules, you have to know the tax regulations and everything else. But most of it is ours. And you cannot quantify what we do, which is why the regulator will never quite get what we do because the regulator wants to prescribe everything and you can't do it. We're dealing with human beings. And a lot of it is vague and clients. The question to most the question we should be asking clients is what's your tolerance for ambiguity? Okay, you're coming with us. With with with sports people, you're coming up on potentially a six decades seven decade journey. We don't know how anything's going to pan out over that time, we can just make a best guest informed plan for you and then tweak the plan as we go along. But if you want certainty, you know, die now. That's the only thing you know. So that's that's the rebalancing. That's what I was saying with balancing. Sorry, I'm kind of going through because we're, we're 54 minutes into this. This shambolic 21st episode. Report. Right. And about some you know, I'm talking in your voice SFTP give me report writing in capital letters. This is my bugbear. Yeah, well, you know, hallelujah, join the club. And it's currently very time consuming. Yeah, videos and other systems to communicate with clients. But do you avoid written reports entirely? Okay, well, let's just stop them and you can't avoid written reports. Certainly, you know, and I, we all have to give advice. We all have to give it in a permanent format. And I certainly give my advice in PDF form to clients but I am using loom more and more. I know Alan is big on loom both for external videos. Yes, the videos. Yeah, just done. Yeah, yeah, it's just a nice way of you know, rather than typing out a lengthy you know people last thing people want their lives there's another bloody Slack message or email or what have you, but if you can send him
Emmelia Powell:a video of your face Nick in there,
Nick Lincoln:not really I do I do. Thank you for that I do make it as small as I possibly can on the video, I minimize it down and say get my shining crown down out of it. But it just you know, you can talk for 60 seconds and have a backdrop of whatever the maybe the cash flow just to recap to people rather than typing out on one PC. You just be creative with it. But you absolutely have to give written advice and you have to do it. Do you have fact find documents? Okay, I'll go here and then someone can jump in cuz I'm talking quite a bit. Your compliance, people will say, Oh, yeah, you do the fact find. And when you got that nailed down, then you give the advice without rubbish. The Fact Finder is an organic document, it's always being updated. But suddenly, through the onboarding process, clients will say, Oh, yeah, I've got this pot over here. I've got this personal. I've got this personal pension with Mercer's and it's worth 350 grand. And he scribbled down on the fact fine. And then it turns out two months later, what they have is a transfer value from versus worth 350 grand that they got a few years ago, but they don't know. So you're always adapting the fact find. But yeah, I have a word document simple three page Word document, I just type into it as and when the facts change. When I give advice, I will then print off a PDF of that fact find so it's locked at that moment in time. And that goes in the compliance folder along with that bit of advice. But the fact finder is organic, it's always evolving. Clients are always finding things they forgot about or they're always they don't know, you know, we use all this jargon. They don't you ask them a question, how many? How many money purchase pension schemes if you've got the game? What you know. So it's, it's got to be it's got to be adaptive. The FCA doesn't tell you what a good report is. No, it doesn't. Soft facts. I had a FCA audit of years ago, as did Mr. Hart. And one of the things that got me through it amazingly, without any issues at all, was the fact that my suitability reports, I go heavy on the soft stuff, the background, the inquiry, what are your key concerns and so forth. And I don't dwell on the hard facts in the advice report. I'm doing a lot of talking here. My final thing, my advice reports are about three pages, four pages long, and then a whole host of appendices at the back. You know, so this is what an ICER is. This is what a pension is. Even though you can Google this shit, I've got to put it in here. But let's stick it at the back so you don't get bored and you know, where anything's swearing What do you did to F bombs last last time, Mr. Mr. Hart? So yeah, guys helped me out here. What do you what do you do on the
Andy Hart:report? Oh, chip in here. Yeah. So I started to do loom videos for my power planner, which is working really well. I've got an outsourced power planner. They are amazing. I don't share who they are. Because they'll get too busy. Just offer really bad service to me that generally what happens with outsource people? So they are fantastic. Yeah, loom videos. I'm a big fan of that. Yeah, we have to write written reports. Obviously, it's a regulatory requirement. fact finding, yeah, I use the original voyant fact find and then I upload all the information into Vine that's updated all the time. I export the advisor fact find they've got a new document actually, have you seen it, Nick? It's called plan assumptions. So pretty decent Export Report. It's mainly for US firms, rather than clients is quite detailed, like client will be a bit confused with it. Yeah, so it's constantly being updated. The annual suitability sort of factored into that. And it's all around yeah, for financial planning. Yeah, I hopefully things like AI are going to help us out with these report writing. But we're still, you know, beholden to these legacy companies that just take ages to do things. I mean, I'm switching one fund from one provider, and they want a 13 page printed form with the wet signatures. And it's a Neil Woodford fund that was left on the platform because I didn't want to move it but now we have to move it and it's going to add are going to dread to think how many hours is spent with within my firm to deal with this one fun being transferred from an old provider to Transact the old provider. What's a 13 page physical form in the post wet signature? It's insane. Anyway, Alan
Alan Smith:not much more to add really the I believe in as Steve Jobs once said, begin with the customer then work your way back. So there are some things that we have to legally do. But how does it sort of land in your clients sort of in their view, because these long and the out, you know, 1012 pages long suitability reports in my experience, very few people actually read them read them thoroughly, but we If it's not, well, we've had a couple of clients who read PageSpeed 17. Alan, I haven't read it. What do you mean? What do you mean by the engineers and lawyers? Yep. So that's why the video things can be useful. You just simply, um, we would generally try to post we use a visa portal. So we write the suitability report, we post it on their portal, quick video, it's up there. So the portal you get access to it. But what it says is this, this, this and this in a verbal and people will certainly watch a two three minute video far sooner than they will read a long verbose document, but and we in naming software, we use a system currently called Lenovo, which is okay. It's designed for writing sort of suitability reports, I don't want to sort of put them down too much. I think that the best of a bad bunch really, I don't think any of these systems are good. And yes, you know, all roads currently lead back to AI being able to build these things in a highly personalized basis, once we put the actual the stuff that we have to disclose, put that in, and then personalize them using some modern technology. But it's a real pain. Do you know what I think when I'm reading reading your notes here, Amelia, just interesting with us old lags on this, this group. And I've learned friend from Ireland as well. We've all got this the curse of knowledge, really, because I'm looking at this and think well, just because over the years, I kind of just you build up experience build up knowledge, as Nick has alluded to earlier, there's some things which are important you must spend some time on and others, which is it's just a kind of a rule of thumb or just, you know, just be sensible. I'm looking at your specific questions. I'm just thinking, Where do people that young planners coming through? Where do you learn from? Where do you really get into the weeds of these things and have conversations like this, we will simply not be able to do this justice and the time we've got here, because each one of those could be an hour, if you like. So I think there seems to be a need for more, more practitioner led information, training, advice, something like that. Maybe we should do a live in person full day trap event one day, get every call code, share our knowledge, and we'll get in the weeds. Yeah,
Emmelia Powell:that's, I think that is the point, though, isn't it that I'm coming in trying to find my feet, looking and taking lots of knowledge from you. And then you guys throw out more books to read. So I read the books and concept in the books and I'm like, what's left and what's right anymore, I kind of I don't know, when I'm trying to make sense of it all. But the knowledge you have is invaluable. And you will probably exit the profession in what another three or four months you'll retire and grow old. And it'll all wait. All of that wisdom will be lost and the likes of me have to figure it out again. So yeah, there's definitely
Alan Smith:it's a good point, that needs to be something because I mean, I grew up, I think Nick and I certainly worked for big corporations, we did get some decent training in house. Back in the day, that's far less prevalent than most financial planning companies. Most of them with a couple of exceptions are small businesses. And no one's really got the time or attention to lead to build a training program or to teach all this stuff in great detail. And yes, you learn on the job. It's a far, far longer journey to learn learn on the job, when you could have a you know, an ability for knowledge transfer, there is a good point we need to explore how we can help that.
Emmelia Powell:Just on that point, I would say I obviously work with my mom, who was an incredible mentor 30 odd years in the profession. Love working alongside her but she is my only person to bounce off. She's and everything that she's done isn't necessarily correct. Likewise with you guys, not everything you do, I will necessarily think is the right way to do it. But the point being is you you bounce the ideas. I mean, that's the point of the podcast, right? You bounce around the ideas, you can take them apart if you feel but largely there's a better way to approach things. I was reading the Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes, good book, he was he was really emphasizing training. A really. And he was just saying about training, you know it's overlooked. This needs to be done routinely regularly. Everybody needs to be efficient. Otherwise, you will never be the Ultimate Sales Machine. So
Alan Smith:to get back to your sports thing, there's not there's not a sports team that doesn't train relentlessly. Elite spandex, always training.
Andy Hart:I think the journey you're going on Amelia is very typical of anyone who's seeking excellence. You know, you clearly want to, you know, do you know become a great financial advisor. And it's no different to what the journey everyone he goes on and the challenges at the moment. You need to learn as much as you can. The real skill is unlearning. You've probably heard me talk about this before. So you want to take in as much as you can. And then over time, you just you just trim and any you shrink your circle of competence that At the moment, I'm, you know, I've just got the answer immediately when I sit down with clients, that doesn't mean we don't go on a bit of a bit of a journey a bit of a dance.
Unknown:And the the ultra grabber Darren, Andy, he knows about everything. Andy can't be told anything. His name is Andrew Hart.
Alan Smith:What a voice.
Andy Hart:Okay, so just on that, yeah, what you're doing, I think it's great. Learn as much as you can. And then the trick is to unlearn but there is no shortcut. You know, to achieve something great. There is no shortcut. So you have really on a bit of a long, windy journey. 10 years, 10,000 hours, right? I mean, you can shortcut the journey, like you're doing consuming a lot of stuff and having your mum as a mentor, friend colleague, is absolutely invaluable. I know, you're sort of seeking more as such, but wow, like, you know, your mom 30 years in the profession. And, you know, I don't know her, but I'm assuming she's decent. I mean, the key to being successful in this business has been in this business, the longer you stay in this business, the more successful you'll be and she has been it for 30 years so Wow. So yeah.
Nick Lincoln:Okay, trap pack. And listen, we're we're time is bloody racing by him and having a good thing. Third point of the meat and potatoes, I mean, you wrote is the accumulation stage. So just quickly closing on report writing is your bugbear in it, because you're forming a business and storming, you're gonna be taking on lots of clients and be given lots of advice at the start, which will mean lots of report writing, and there's no way around it that will taper off as your business matures. And you focus more on looking after the clients you've already got than onboarding the new clients, which is a pain for everybody. And it's just the price of admission at the moment, to accumulating clients, Matthew GRBs, delivering tremendous value guardrails? How do you approach clients who are accumulating an equity invested? How do you approach clients who, even when you have broken down what volatility is, and the risk to capital is the value being eroded, not the volatility of the markets, those people who still want to lower risk exposure, I don't take them on board, Amelia, that the key message is about the risk to your purchasing power being eroded by inflation and everything else is noise. Volatility is your friend. And if they don't get it, or they push back at the prospecting stage, they don't get on the ark, the easiest way to keep the loons out of your life is not to let them into your life in the first place. You just have a ruthless onboarding mechanism. Amelia, what do you think about that?
Emmelia Powell:So I kind of see that in two parts. One is to cumulating clients. And when we've had a period of volatility and declines in the market for the last two years, where everything's just been a little bit messy, how do you approach to accumulation now when it is potentially the only source of income for a client? How were you safeguarding the returns, that you aren't eating into the Capitol too much to continue their income?
Alan Smith:Can I just throw in my two penneth This This is the essence of real financial planning is it's it's matching is sort of it's it's liability matching if you know, the client needs to have 50,000 pounds a year to support their lifestyle with a specific time horizon and you've adjusted for inflation and you've done you've built a really granular high quality financial model financial plan then in our opinion, you're keeping your assets you know, you're going to be spending over the next two or three years in non volatile assets which is predominant cash and yes, you're taking the hits that is going to be suffering at the hands of inflation but you know, you're gonna be spending it pretty soon you don't have the luxury of taking over embracing short term market volatility because you don't want to do because you know the clients gonna be spending it so identifying capital expenditure like I want to buy a new car next year we're gonna go on a massive holiday and I want to you know, I just want to enjoy the court you know, the fruits of my labor and enjoys have a nice lifestyle. That is the essence and back to Nick's point it we do apply science but then there's a kind of rule of thumb and a conversation and managing it across the clients lifestyle there is no perfect solution but for the benefit of the skew
Emmelia Powell:off the back of that when you've done accumulating them and obviously you use volume or you use a financial planning cash flow model. I've not had the experience where I've gone you know what voyant was there or there abouts? It was a was about right the markets did do this and the pot was about this in five years time. Have you found that your financial planning on cashflow has matched largely how you thought it was gonna
Nick Lincoln:go? Andy?
Andy Hart:Oh champion for that. Yes. It's scary how accurate I am. If I went back 10 years ago, in 2013. Honestly, me again, me and Nick talk about this a bit don't really mean it mean. So if I went back to 2013 and Where I told the client they would be in 2023 Weirdly, I'm not that far off. It's scarily accurate sometimes I have to triple check it and go that didn't liquid assets that close to what I projected. Yeah, so I use simplistically cautious, deterministic growth rates and buoyant and as a real financial adviser building real plans for real clients and monitoring those real outcomes. It's scarily scarily accurate Have you found that Nick
Nick Lincoln:Yeah, I have I have it just things just tend to it's a funny thing and I'm not religious or anything but I think the universe responds if you plan if you put a plan in place any do those things in that plan that you should be doing saving and behaving properly and not disinvest? You know what the plan tends to pan out over time it just it just kind of happens Amelia?
Alan Smith:Well don't don't don't forget that you should be doing this and reviewing it once every 12 months at least anyway. So you're always you're always course correcting your plan if we do inaccurate for a period of time, your cause your course correcting I cannot just throw one other thing in here which I just thought of and we do come back to our you know, author of financial planning coaching God before Nick Murray, Nick Murray is very very, very strong on a concept he calls doing lifeboat drills, you would tell your client if you tell Nick Murray Oh, I've had this client he got upset by the volatility and series fired me or something Nick Murray was shouted at you, you stupid person. Body. And he's he's done that on the newsletter. You stupid by the sea run a lifeboat, you love it, you run a lifeboat drill, you was saying to your client, the client, when this is not a maybe this is a definite there will be periods in our relationship with the capital value of the short term of your retirement fund will be lower than last time we met it is a guarantee. So we're going to act out what we'll do, let's just kind of roleplay it. It's a lifeboat drill, when you've got an ocean going liner, they do live port drills. What would happen not hoping the ship doesn't sink. But if it ever does something, we've we've rehearsed it. And it's all you create your kind of the financial plan added to a lifeboat drill that is your North Star. And in those moments because clients are uniquely human as we are. And everyone gets a bit worried and everyone gets a bit scared because they've been absolutely bombarded by the you know, the negative events World Service, the news? Sorry, negative stuff we say remember, we built the North Star we did the lifeboat drill, what is the plans? They weren't the plan tell us we will do in the inevitable experience that the markets have done, we will do nothing will adjust will rebalance. We'll look to our cash assets. And we'll carry on remember that? Yes. Good. That's it. So you got to plan ahead for it.
Andy Hart:I think it's important to revisit that or bang on about that a lot in the welcome meeting. So I'm all about generally the market goes up about 75% of the time down about 25% of the time, these are good odds, at least once a year, the market will decline from a high point to a low point of minus 14%. You know, just banging on about these things. So they're going into it, their eyes wide open. There's nothing worse than the client thrown in a grenade. Every so often is in an email takes them three seconds to write between the car and the train station, it takes you three hours to frickin deal with. So the less grenades you can get. The better. Yeah, I mean, just just just the low friction client has sent you a WhatsApp, what was happening to my portfolio and you think, you know, is this is this something important to deal with? You know, it's just such low friction. So anything important needs to be a face to face meeting. But yeah, in the welcome meeting, I really do bang on about the high level information around the markets. Interestingly, Amelia, you've been predominantly, I think, only in the professional for a couple of years. So you've had side Woods market, you know, declining sideways markets for two years, which is good, you know, you own your golden coins during the declines and the downtimes you know, during the good times, I mean, any old schmuck Can, can can sound, you know, pretty intelligent in front of clients, as we've all experienced during the good times. Yeah, even even Nicholas Lincoln,
Nick Lincoln:I think just, just just, exactly. Just closing thank you for that. Just closing on this the D D cumulation. That I don't call it D accumulation I call it the spending phase D accumulation is when there's horrible words that nobody outside of what we do understand is the spending stage and this is not new, this is not have a couple of years worth of living expenses in cash within your if it's in within your pension fund. So if it's outside of the pension fund have to put the max you can into Premium Bonds husband and wife 100 grand if the markets are going down, we stopped the withdrawals from investment portfolio and we lean on that most bear markets are over within about 36 to 40 months, okay, peak to trough. As soon as it goes back up again, we start split but again, it's just the art part of it, you know, and
Emmelia Powell:then replenish that you on the years of good you take from
Nick Lincoln:the factories, the markets, the markets decline, they tend to recover as aggressively and more and actually you never need to replenish that pot because the markets go up most of the time anyway, and they go up and up and up until you have a long time until the next step and actually the portfolio is recovered so much but if you wanted to make you feel better, you could strip some of that later growth out, put it back into Premium Bonds, but the chances are the portfolio's recovered to such a degree. You don't need to have that two years living expense bucket right believe that just shouldn't be needed but you can do it and more importantly if it makes the clients feel comfortable and it will keep them mainly invested by having that little safety blanket there then do it you know because the idea you know, we're all very dogmatic and driven and we have our beliefs but ultimately you want the clients to be comfortable and to remain invested so if having a little pot there safely pot that keeps them on track crack up crack on and do this and gents were gents and and Lady guests. Were one hour 15 minutes I think we're going to skip the because there must be something wrong with the traffic around Watford the post is not turned up with with her bulging sack. So I think we should go straight to culture corner we okay with that. Let's do it. Sure. Okay, let's go through this. Mr. Smith, the Scott Galloway podcast with Ryan Holiday.
Alan Smith:Got nothing close personal friend of my friend of yours, professors, professors.
Nick Lincoln:789.
Alan Smith:Now let's say I saw I if anyone knows Professor Scott Galloway, Prof. G have a big I've mentioned before, but I've been yet lurking around the streets of the West End of London. He's relocated to Marleybone. And I saw him was at lunch with Ruth, another advisor a few weeks ago and Scott Galloway went in and I yeah, I've been up and accosted him and say, Can I have a selfie please? And he told me where to go, but it was no He's a gentleman. Anyway, I have a big big fan.
Andy Hart:I don't know. We Kalin. I think that week in his blog, he was talking about fame and being approached by random street literally the week
Alan Smith:yeah, yeah, exactly right. In his newsletters, we can use letter just come out. He said yeah, people come out of fashion ministry. But he said that always very positive and kind and all that. So now he was he was he was good. Before he told me where to go. He's gonna He's got a podcast, which I listened to every week. And it's like a lot of podcasts as some episodes are better than others. They went out this week or last week, he interviews Ryan Holiday. I don't know if any of you come across Ryan Holiday Andy probably would have done Ryan Holiday is sort of he studies the stoics if you know the Stoics, that kind of ancient wisdom, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus and others, and there are so many lessons from this ancient wisdom that apply to us today. Ryan Holiday has got a new book out and it's sort of and this might appeal to you as well, Amelia, all of us on this call our parents that he's got stoicism for parents, you know, some of the things as you go if you've got young little kids, which sort of drive you nuts sometimes, but there's an approach you take. So it's a really nice interview that Scott Galloway does with Ryan Holiday. And he talks about, yes, stoicism as in the modern world and how it particularly relates to parenting well worth checking out. Thank you.
Andy Hart:I'm six days into potty training twins. Will the book be able to assist with that?
Alan Smith:Yeah, it will. You should you should get the book. Listen,
Andy Hart:don't master drafted the number ones and not mastered the number twos. I wish it was the other way around. Hi. Hi. Fantastic.
Alan Smith:Fantastic. Thanks for sharing Am I Am I
Nick Lincoln:okay, my corner is this this book must be well known actually. Because I think that Dan, Solon is well known and I must have heard it from someone here or someone maybe a peer group down the line, but ask how to relate to anyone by Dan Solan, which I'm, I'm reading the Kindle version, I think, really good. Really good. I know that Alan and I are big fans of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, which is the preeminent self help self improvement book and everything stems from that. Ask how to relate to anyone by Dan. So it's like an updated version of that book really. And it's just really you and I would suggest getting copies of that for your staff or your family? or what have you because it just it'll help your human interactions. Believe it or not, is helped mine but I'm a work in progress. Going on to the next culture corner Mr. Hart go into Bogle.
Andy Hart:Yeah, so I've got a couple of culture corners. I can't get enough of this guy go into Bogle is a modern day sort of philosopher. He was on the Chris Williamson podcast three times. He's on another podcast called the seen and the unseen. Two hours and 15 minutes is absolutely mind blown. Just check him out. I mean, his story is fantastic. It's a super podcast. Following on for self help books. There's a book by the school of life. I'm a huge fan of the school of life, I believe that based around Holborn and they do sort of live events. And they also do a lot of materials and books. They got a great book called arguments. And it's a really small book. And it it describes the 20 types of argument. And when you're reading it, it just, I mean, it's not new stuff that you don't know. But the way it sort of crystallized all this information in your brain. It's really, really useful. Certainly, if you're in a relationship, which everybody on the call is and people listening to this probably will be. It's very interesting. Yeah, it's just called arguments and it's the 20 different types of arguments. It's a really small book, you go through it and put maybe one or two sittings. But yeah, I check out all the stuff from the school life. So check it out The School of Life, they've got amazing videos on YouTube. And they've got loads of card games and stuff that you can buy online that I've bought and sort of done with friends and family and maybe a couple of clients. So yeah, school life is a is a huge recommendation. And back to you look
Nick Lincoln:Thank you very much. This one from the trackback don't don't need it's a lesson in how to argue to an art form book. So that's great stuff. Amelia, anything to throw in?
Emmelia Powell:I just read everything you send me and my phone textbooks. License really not very exciting. Yeah, nothing too crazy there. But I'm reading the Ultimate Sales Machine and just finished simple wealth, inevitable wealth on holiday. And delivering massive value was the audio book. I was listening to.
Andy Hart:What did you think? Simple wealth? What did you think of simple wealth, inevitable wealth by Nick Murray? Is that your first Nick Murray book?
Emmelia Powell:Yeah. First one, it was really hard to get hold of as well, actually. Okay, just. It was really good. I like it. Like I was saying the theory around equity investment. And that's where I bought some of the concepts for that question that you kind of just sees five. And he actually talks about, and I don't know whether I'm being a bit controversial her neck, but he talks about over investing and having too much diversification. And it made me think about some of the funds that I've looked at where you've got 10s of 1000s of shares, and his comment there. And then I was like,
Nick Lincoln:Can I Can I interject? I think my record No, I know, he talked about what you were advisors were to have like six or seven or eight funds, thinking they're diversified. And what you've actually got is massive overlap within those funds. So you haven't you haven't got diversification in the sense, you've got 1000s and 1000s of great companies, you've got funds that investing in the same great companies, and actually aren't that diversified. So they're kind of redundant,
Alan Smith:we see that you see that all the time you take on new clients, and they've been with some previous advisors, they've got 27 Different or 35 different funds. But if you just lift the lid, they're all investing in broadly the same things. So the thing that diversifying at the fund level, when actually they're not, that's when Nick Murray is kind of pointing out, we are a something that Nick's got, you've got 10,000 underlying securities, which is with bond fund. So that's arguably far, far better. But yeah, there's the more you dig into this, the more the more questions probably arise. So that's we're happy to have you back again, Amelia, in a future episode when one of us takes off for holidays.
Emmelia Powell:I'll just keep reading everything you send. And then I'll come and interrogate you about it.
Nick Lincoln:Well, I think I think I listen, I think we're listening. We're at 83 minutes in and this has been Amelia thank you so much. You've been a star thank you for your work and everything else you've you've contributed a great deal. We're going to see you Amelia humans under management. So if we don't win the next gen best podcast of the Year Award, you're gonna be in trouble. I think we can say it's a wrap for this episode. Thank you, dear trappers for your precious time and your input into the show raters leave a review on iTunes six out of five stars, it'd be lovely. Watch us, God forbid on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Until the next time, adios from the trap pack and take care out there folks. Goodbye.