TRAP: The Real Adviser Podcast

89 - Fundment Fundamentals With Ola Abdul

• Alan Smith; Andy Hart; Carl Widger; Nick Lincoln • Episode 89

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TRAP LIVE26 tickets on sale here: https://www.therealadviserpodcast.com/

In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

  • Topical Titbits
  • Meat and Potatoes: Interview with Fundment CEO and founder, Ola Abdul
  • TRAPist question from Wilson R
  • Culture Corner

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

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Unknown:

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

Nick Lincoln:

Yes, indeed. Do trappers, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 89 of the real advisor podcast. My name is officially Nick Lincoln, and joining me in the digital studio of doom are the three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the ultra heart, Carl della voce, the voice widger and Alan the storyteller. Smith, Now, gentlemen, we have a show packed full of app, absolutely nothing, so let's start unpacking it straight away with some more high energy review reads or read from my very good friend the right honorable Mr. Andrew Usain

Andy Hart:

Hart, thank you, Nicholas, we're back to one review today. We are at that desperate, desperate time, so please do go to the Apple podcast app platform and leave a review for us, and you'll get read out on the next show. Thank you very much. This one is from Keith hair. Entitled, irreverent, outspoken, essential listening. Five stars. Love Your Work, gents, as a relatively recent TRAPPIST epiphany, 71 episode 71 I was initially a bit skeptical, having enjoyed Nick's and Alan's various LinkedIn rants over the years, I assumed this might be a watered down, homogenized protein shake of a podcast, but to my great relief, you were just as opinionated, irreverent and outspoken as I had hoped, the content is excellent, with some very pertinent views and practical takeaways. In every episode, there needs to be a new category on the CII website, chaotic, unstructured, but mandatory. CCD with a link to the podcast. Bravo. Chaps, six out of five stars. Back to you.

Nick Lincoln:

Nicholas, lovely. Thank you, Keith here for that review. And yes, as I alluded to, please do keep them coming in. They give us a shot in the arm. That's the vitamin C.

Alan Smith:

Just, just for people going just for a second. Is that the last one we've got in our hopper, right? So we're either gonna have to change the format this podcast, because we've had reviews pretty much every week, we get a lot of comments on LinkedIn and DM saying, I love the podcast. What have you please? If you do like it, then just jump on. I know it's not a very user friendly format, is it the apple podcast, but it seems to be that's the place that the that they land. So please just jump on, go on the trap podcast on Apple and tell us what you think good or

Unknown:

we can always read out the one that Andy left for us.

Alan Smith:

Of the podcast. Did he give us a five star? Because he gave me a one star on my podcast. But yeah, that's another story. Right back to Nicholas.

Nick Lincoln:

Good stuff. Good stuff. Okay, so obviously we had the launch of trap live in the last episode, and that's going great guns with a brilliant, brilliant start to that. And we, I think we're down now to just checking with my people in the ticket hall, how many, how many left? 35 Sir, 35 tickets left, apparently, for travel. So get on it. The real advisor podcast, real advisor podcast, calm. Get on that. Book your ticket, come along. It's going to be a great event. There's a great event in the day, run by Brett Davidson. There's a great event the next day, run by friend of the show, Abraham and his timeline crew. Be there or be square, right? Let's kick off with talking of going to something at the drop of an envelope. You two clowns talk us through it quickly.

Unknown:

Go on Andy. Cool

Andy Hart:

and Andy. Okay, so Alan and I had the privilege of attending the London Stock Exchange opening bell ceremony. It was a huge privilege to be invited. We got invited by the menstrual fund advisors. They were launching a couple of their new ETFs. It was all very strict on timings, as I say, once in a lifetime, it was a great event. And yeah, we got the chance to open the London Stock Exchange. It wasn't the most best of days in terms of market performance. We made

Unknown:

a drop by one and a half within minutes of opening, we were looking

Andy Hart:

at a sea of red when I opened it got these super fancy graphics. Yeah, it was amazing. I thought was a superb, superb morning. You know, I was, I was, I was heading home at sort of 10 past nine. So a lot happened in that short space of time. Over to you, Alan,

Alan Smith:

nothing much to add. It was having worked in financial services. All my life, never had the opportunity to go to the London Stock Exchange. Didn't know where it was, but it's yes, a beautiful setup, as you might imagine, which is a huge, really, really professionally organized and well done. Of course, the the assembled crew who who got the nod, got the invitation where they had a sort of private coffee and breakfast laid on. And the London Stock Exchange do it very well, and they roll out. And I guess back in the day, they took the call it, you know, ringing the opening bell. I suppose it was a bell at some point, at 8am on the dot. But yet she said it's electronic now, so you press this electronic buzzer button and the market is open and trading starts, and yeah, in our experience, markets began to go into free fall within seconds. There was a slight funny side story that I got to share. Of course, I go to the great coming back. I mean, I'm the tube heading back to my area where I had a couple of meetings. Later, I thought, Oh, this is a, this is monumentous. I'll do a quick post, tongue in cheek post on LinkedIn, because I had an image of Andy and I pressing the buzzer. Of course, the dimensional, you know, senior people were the ones, or the sort of CEO guys. He actually pressed, it was their fun, their ETF launch. It wasn't. It looked like it was our day, didn't. But I didn't but I didn't say you're opening the and people actually thought, because I said, on behalf of trap, the real advisor podcast, here's Andy and I opening, you know, the global the London Stock, as if, as if the LSE would say, Oh, should we get these jokers from that podcast? Yeah. And then, as happens, next thing I know, it's on the front page of bloody city wire. New Model advisor magazine. Advisors, open the markets, and then markets fall, going to free fall. I thought, Oh my God, our friend Vicki Bell, shout out to Vicky. New Model advisor,

Andy Hart:

a negative slant on it, didn't she? She couldn't have just celebrated our lovely morning. Click bait. Click bait, 1%

Alan Smith:

Yeah, because we opened that.

Unknown:

But sounds like an awesome morning to be fair. Declan King, our CIO was there, and he said it was great. He said he'd really love to go to the opening of a big one. Anyway, really hard thinking what I say

Andy Hart:

back to that. Well, he said the Irish Stock Exchange doesn't exist anymore. Carl, it was like 10 stocks. He said, You can't actually buy an Irish stock market, like index fund. It doesn't exist or something. Anyway, just a bit of a stick with the s, p, anyway, it was a fun day. We got to sign the famous book, didn't we? Alan every day.

Alan Smith:

You know what? It was pristine, unsigned. Just turned over the page for the new listing, and heart gets the pen, walks up to be the first person to

Andy Hart:

sign it, yeah. Then they quickly, quickly move away, step away from the book. Anyway, that

Alan Smith:

was fun. Great. Great day. Well organized by dimensional and

Andy Hart:

good fun. Yep. Thank you, right.

Nick Lincoln:

Watch your pal. Terry Smith,

Unknown:

not my pal, yeah. So in the interest of trying to sorry, in the interest of trying to see the both sides of every story. I said I'd listen to this interview. It's called, it's a podcast called behind the balance sheet. And basically, this guy seems to interview a whole load of active fund managers. So I listened to this Terry Smith one, and I look, I put the link in the show notes. I encourage everyone to listen to it. He didn't impress me much. I thought some of his answers were almost borderline condescending. So look, we did have a chat offline about this. Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe the guy does know everything in fact, and I should give them the credit for that, but I really do think we should do a longer piece on smartphone managers, because for me, it's a myth, and it's a myth that needs to be busted, and I think we should be doing that because I Don't know. Like, talk about a guy who just is so sure of himself and yet so fundamentally wrong, in my opinion, based on the evidence that I have studied in my 30 year career in this business. So, yeah, I think it's a longer piece we should do in the short term, like this guy has also interviewed. When I looked back to other episodes that guy, Nick trained so like he's getting them all, all the heroes in so totally and the opposite of what I believe in. But, yeah, good to challenge yourself sometimes, but it kind of annoyed me. I listened to it on a walk, and I didn't enjoy the walk.

Alan Smith:

I thought he. A very he says more about me. I often thought he was a very articulate communicator. I've seen him doing his AGM and all that. He's talking straight. He's, you know, he's put forward as kind of the UK's Warren Buffett, you know, straight. He only buys value, buy and hold. He's not going to get caught up in the mag seven frenzy.

Unknown:

You can, you can track tons and hundreds of speeches of Warren Buffett on YouTube. And I've gone down the rabbit hole, and I always get something out of it. I got nothing out of this one. So if you're comparing and contrasting those two people, please do listen to it and see what

Alan Smith:

you think. Yeah, fair comment. We should. We should do a deeper dive.

Andy Hart:

I've consumed a lot of Terry Smith stuff his annual shareholder meeting, a lot of the stuff, he puts out his owner's manual. I think a lot of the values and principles are a line. Carl, you say it's like totally opposite of what you think. Obviously you, you know, generally buy the market, and you let that do its thing. He buys individual companies, but a small amount. I think his latest Holdings is about 30 or 35 so he's got very strong conviction. So there is similarity,

Unknown:

which is wrong. He's totally wrong about them. And so I would extol the virtues of buying fund with more than 10,000 stocks. So if they're not polar opposites, then I don't know what is Yeah,

Andy Hart:

but yeah, but that's the implementation. You both believe that markets work. You both believe, not using derivatives. You both believe, no. He believes,

Unknown:

no, I don't. He doesn't believe markets work. He believes everybody else. No, he's looking

Nick Lincoln:

for mispriced securities because the market doesn't work. That's his worldview.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, exactly. He put out. He's he's written a lot about something I can't remember his head, but it's like companies run by idiots. There's some very derogatory phrase he's got about, yeah,

Andy Hart:

company that could be run by idiots, but someday,

Alan Smith:

no, this is once he's met with the CEOs and boards of various companies, and he's come to the conclusion

Unknown:

that they're, if he's trying to explain a concept, that's that's that he believes, but maybe the vast majority of people don't believe. You know, he gives his evidence or his proof, and he sounds, it's condescending. He kind of has a little laugh at the end of the sentence, and it's like, you know, I want the wisdom from Warren Buffett. I do not want to be listening to this guy. And look my look when you sent in that annual shareholders letter way back, Andy, and I read it, and you loved it, and I went, Oh, my God, this is, this is terrible stuff. So this only confirmed what I already believed, which I suppose is, and

Andy Hart:

that's the beauty of the world. Everyone has their opinions, which, yeah, no. And look,

Unknown:

we'll definitely be talking about that later on. And that is, I'm okay with that, but I suppose to have, yeah, to have the courage of your conviction and to say that, no, I, like Terry Smith, might shoot the lights out for the next five years and prove me wrong, but I'm still sticking with it, and in the long term, I think the evidence tells me we'll be right. Are very close

Alan Smith:

to right. Well, as the saying goes, You're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts. And he's underperformed now for the fifth consecutive year. Every superstar has a bad year, a couple of bad years, five years on the battle on the trot. Yeah, that's gonna be hard to defend.

Unknown:

Anyway, I I propose, over the coming weeks, we do a deeper dive in this. We've probably done a much cheaper type than we should have today. But anyway, I propose that, and I think we should all do a bit of research into that.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, okay. Well, keep it going. And so on a similar theme, funds, Sweden,

Alan Smith:

well, this, this, this is just another story. Is it's it comes up with you know, frequently, unfortunately, I just saw this, the public sector pension schemes, local council. This is in Scotland, in Aberdeen, all places. And they piled into a series of Swedish wind farms, as you do, as their allocation, because it was considered, you know, defensive income generating and what we

Unknown:

have some solar stuff going astray here. If you want

Alan Smith:

to come over here, their allocation has already been taken. Oh no, they might have a new allocation, because it's gone to zero. It's basically been wiped out. The thing, the project didn't work, it's got they've lost the money or not. The tax holders, taxpayer, I should say the taxpayers lost the money. This is a public sector pension scheme. Oh, my God, the amount of times this comes up. And you know, in a time when you know finances are tight in the UK economy, and taxpayers funding all these things that taxpayers fund, one of which is public sector pension schemes, effectively funded by the UK taxpayer. And this would be the simplest thing. These are all long term. They obviously need some actuarial modeling, because they've got people who are receiving income. They've got people who've just joined the scheme will be retiring in 30 years from now. It needs to if there's nothing, nothing is better suited than a long term buy and hold simple in. Investment strategy. What the hell are they doing, buying Swedish bloody wind farms within this and then losing the

Andy Hart:

money because completely Sultans come in, sell them the dream.

Alan Smith:

Well, they're now. They're not. I can quote this is it. I've given a posted a link to the articles in The Telegraph and a few other papers as well. So they're now suing, which is legal stuff, Hermes, who are some, not the clothes thing, Aramis or whatever they're called, pensions consultants, investment advisors, suing them, taking them to court, that would be a big, you know, litigation battle with legal fees and what have you to try and get their money back, or say it was about. I mean, what the hell are they doing? It's just, it's just really annoying when you see these things going on. There's another, last thing I'll say in this is when you see the great model for this, because they'll say, Well, it's a very large, I can't remember how much, but many, many 10s of billions are in this particular pension fund. And they'll say, Well, it's very large. We need diversification. There's very few bigger than the Norwegian sovereign fund, and they are pretty much long term buy and hold global equities with a bit of bonds, a bit of real estate or something else. But yeah, 80% capital equities, Yep, yeah, with a couple of trillion, I think they've got Yeah, so yeah, just flagging that up. Push back on it wherever you see it. But the same things apply to other in the retail world as well. You're really rich. Mr. Client, will give you some something interesting, something spicy, something to allocate. We do only do 10% allocation to the rich.

Andy Hart:

Swedish wind farm investment large, you're told, the rich you are, the more investment lies you're told.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, spot on. Case are, I'm afraid, with these stories, but they are. They we keep on talking about them, because they keep on happening, and they do affect real people. It might seem distant, arm's length stuff, but these public sector pensions, if they go down the Swanny, that will be their cost we will all bear, right? Oh, brief, transact, family linking, ultra you've

Andy Hart:

been brief, I think this is quite boring development in the platform well. So this is a good news story, a good news story, transact, have? They have something called Family linking, whereas usually Mr. And Mrs. They aggregate the fees across Mr. And Mrs. But now they've extended it across families, and on the first of April this year, they're extending it further. So they're basically extending it to link siblings, partners of siblings, nieces and nephews. So they're really taking the point of view of applying their fees across the aggregate of the whole family. So I think it's, I think it's awesome. Good, good move forward. Really good on sort of family planning stuff, and the examples they've given of families with, you know, a few million quid, the fees are going to come down drastically. I think it's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant news, and other platforms should hopefully follow suit. I mean, siblings, partners of siblings that they don't even need to be married. That's a that's a loose connection, but, well, that's the devil's in the detail. Over to you.

Alan Smith:

Alan, well, that's, that's my question. I think it's pretty common thing. Most platforms nowadays do offer family linking, but once you seen friend, friends of a friend of a guy I met down in the pub, my girlfriend's brother. But so the question is, how do they know? Do they just take the advisors? Word for it? This is the partner of my son, son in law, or whatever? Do they just take me? There's obviously some good faith on the advisor. Yeah, you're not gonna have to prove it. If I'm, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's a that they're just extending it wider, which is, I think, no. It's a positive, definitely, massively positive, yeah, okay, okay, good stuff.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, so it's me next on the slate, and Rachel reads last budget we know about. She, she proposed this idea, which had been muted ever since the labor slave had got back into power, that ices were going to be fiddled with in some respects. And the fiddling that she has done coming in next year, April 2027 is to reduce the amount of money you can hold in a cash ISA from 20,000 pounds down to 12,000 pounds, unless you're 65 and over, which is an arbitrary date, doesn't even link into the sort of the current state retirement age you think, if you do it anyway, you may link with that. But it's 65 and over, you can have 20,000 pounds in cash. Isa, 65 and under, you can't 12,000 and apparently it's just a complete dog's dinner. It's a good article. There's link in the so called Show Notes from Sam Brodbeck at the telegraph, who's one of the better journalists out there, actually. And he, you know, he tends to hit more than he misses. And there's, there's a euphemisms, but the people, people within our industry dealing with the Treasury say it's being challenging, which is a euphemism for the Treasury don't know their arse from their elbow. And this, there's this that this thing is going to be, I think, pretty hard to manage. You know, because people are going to money market funds. Are they cash funds? The idea Rachel Reeves, on the surface, are prima facie. Reason for doing this is to get people invested in UK companies. There's this ongoing thing to shoehorn people, well, even if they do move from cash ISIS and directories, they ain't going to go into the UK. They're going to go, they're going to follow the great companies of the world, which means predominantly, you know, the global portfolio, which people are much more in than they used to be, because the home bus thing is evaporating. They're going, they're going to go into US stocks, predominantly. So, um, yeah, it's just like cash ices have been one of the success stories of the UK financial. Services over the last three decades there, when they were peps formally, then they became ISIS, and, you know, just leave alone because of their simplicity,

Alan Smith:

that's just, I know it. I can put this amount in so good, 20 grand, tax free, tax free income, tax free growth. Lovely, beautiful product. Now she's dabbling with it.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, it's just good article. And also, there's a link to a LinkedIn post that was put on there about about this, this move as well. I've just lost the guy's details. I'm sorry about that, but the link is in the show notes, and I favor a really good piece about this as well. So, yeah, what can you do it is, it is what it is. But it's just gonna be very difficult to manage this, I think. And I don't think it'll have the outcomes that Rachel Reeves has said, on the surface she wants to achieve, I think really, what she wants to do is get a bit more tax and get get less money out of cash ISIS and more money into taxable cash accounts. Okay, a webinar watch. Yeah.

Unknown:

I'm told that some people to tick the box in their CPD log into lots of webinars and actually don't listen to them at all. So I thought that I'm told that that happens sometimes. So I came across an absolutely brilliant webinar, I would say the best one I've ever actually seen, in terms of CPD for one hour. Aviva did it. A guy called John Dee in there. Was the, think that's his name. I hope that's the name was the MC I need two economists from Ireland, Jim power and David McWilliams. And they kind of bounced off each other a little bit. Not that they disagreed, necessarily, but they were really, really good. They did a kind of the first half of the show was, uh, where we are at in Ireland. It's really important, because obviously we have a lot of good stuff happening, but there's challenges coming down the road and to, I suppose, bring people to that, to face up to those issues that we do have. And then it was kind of the world view, but look just credit where credit is due. It was absolutely brilliant. More of that content, please. Aviva and everybody else. I'm not sure I put the link in the show notes. I'm not sure if the UK advisors will be able to watch it, but if you can, I think you should, because it would give you a good feel for actually, what why Ireland has been successful the challenges it faces, but it also does the kind of here's here's what's facing us from a world economic point of view, as a really, really good. Bravo.

Nick Lincoln:

Aviva. Okey dokey. Good stuff. And of course, we watch all our webinars from start to finish. Watch, how dare you infer anything else?

Andy Hart:

Answer the questions. Well, I do get the old certificate.

Unknown:

That's sometimes something that happens.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, who's next on the slate? Next on the slate this, Andy, you can run with this. I'm gonna go have a lie down.

Andy Hart:

It's back to me. This is big news last week, wasn't it? Mr. Trump doing his stuff in Davos. I've watched the full speech. I think you boys did as well. Maybe, maybe Carl, not. We'll find out in a minute. I thought was a bit of a master class, if I'm being totally honest. Incredibly well written, incredibly well delivered. Speaking to a room of the rich and powerful, he set it out really well. At first, he basically said, This is what I think America is doing. Well, this is what we're not doing well, this is what we're changing. This is what we're on the front foot with, you know. And he's very honest and open, shared anecdotes, off the cuff stories, and he's basically just saying that Europe is heading in the opposite direction to the US, and it's potentially going to be disastrous. Yeah. So I just thought I'd I'd mention it. If you haven't watched the full speech, I recommend watching the full spree, the full speech, because the media's report on it is not what I watch from the from the full speech. That's that really any other comments from you, boys, did you? Did you watch it? What was your thoughts? I watched him?

Nick Lincoln:

I don't want to get into the political thing. I you know, we have our views on Trump.

Alan Smith:

Oh, come on, Carl, you got a view?

Unknown:

No, I think it's a joke that you'd even put it on the slate, to be honest. Not happy about that at all. Boys.

Alan Smith:

Seriously, all opinions. All opinions count. That's not

Unknown:

on politics. We've always said that we leave politics out of this. I don't think that you should have put it on a slave.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, I agree. It's just, it's just, well, it does flow into global economics, capital markets. What I would say is, and if you see the interview with Howard lutnik, that's, that's interesting, yeah, well, he's the Commerce Secretary, and he's, you know, he's the guy from what's the name of the company that he had that, sadly, was sort of hit by the 911 but, you know, whatever, Trump has surrounded himself with some very, very smart people, there's no question about that. And they are kind of driving the global, kind of geopolitical situation right now. So in your opinion, in my opinion,

Nick Lincoln:

what's next? Let's move on. Let's move on. Let's let's get away from that, which means Zen plans.

Alan Smith:

Just a quick when I had a conversation with the founder of this company recently. You. Know, we've well in my phone, we've often tried to this idea of kind of we call it an ice pack. In case of emergency, your client gets hit by a bus, drops down dead, all their information, wills, details, powers of attorney, policies, bank accounts, all that sort of stuff. And it's useful. I mean, some people have their own spreadsheet at home. Some people have a piece of paper, a document. Zen plans are a company. There's a few companies around to do this, but I had a meeting with them. Looks really good, is what I would say. Go online like a digital storage course. You can save it, print it off, do whatever you want to do, but if anything untoward happened to one of your clients and the spouse or the family wanted access to information. It looked to me like a really nice, elegant solution. The other thing I found quite interesting, it was what they call, like legacy assets. So, you know, all the photographs you've got on your phone, I've got 1000s of photographs and videos and family things and and you've got your you kind of Spotify, or whatever music accounts. There's a whole bunch of things that are digital that can disappear if the person becomes deceased and without trying to navigate through that all things. There's a process to deal with that. I think even though I just checked out afterwards, I sort of heard about this, but never utilized it on App on the full iPhone that I use, there's a legacy contact where you can put people's details and then it won't have to sort of navigate through all the passwords and what have you. So I just thought it's quite useful. Check out Zen plans. Posted a link to the website in the show notes. Could be helpful for some

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, thank you very much. What are we on to? Now we're on to, oh god, yeah. Me, so, quilt, so, okay, oh God, all my, all our careers, for the last 150 years with profits, has been a part of the industrial side of our this thing of ours, and it still is remarkably popular. And so I see that quilter are launching a rival to the M and G proof under to be managed by Standard Life. And again, this was a link to this is in the show notes as situa article and priced at 1% well point nine, nine, conveniently, just under 1% but then you add on the platform fees and your advisor fee, and you're probably looking well over 2% for a managed fund designed apparently comes as demand grows for solutions that provide clients reassurance from the uncertainty of investing. And then it goes on to explain how the buddy thing works, and your head starts to boil. It is understood the Standard Life smooth fund were built on the same bravura technology used for m and G's proof Fund, which uses an expected growth rate smoothing mechanism. In this mechanism Standard Life project how much the fund should grow by over the long term, and the fund price accrues to that rate daily. If the smooth price diverts too for diverges too far from the actual market value of the funds, holding the price and or EGR rate are adjusted. I mean, once again, I think I really don't. I was brought up in a unit link firm, so I've always been unit link price. I've never, I was never sold with profits. I never saw the value of them. I detest with profits. I detest these products. They're for lazy advisors who want an easy ride, and by the time the poor sods are in these run out of money at age 83 the advisors buggered off or is dead, and it's just they should be Yuck, just yuck, yuck, yuck. Any views?

Alan Smith:

Nick, sorry if you've already said this, because when you started explaining the product, but I lost the will to live. So you might have already said this. I wasn't paying attention to the last two minutes, but I did look at, I appreciate your honesty, but before we hit the record button, I did have a look at the fund and sort of lifted the lid at all the kind of small print and what have you. And what I found quite intriguing was that, and I can't remember exactly. I think it's something like a five or 10% adjustment. So if the underlying look, I grew up on with profits, and I did recommend them for in the early days, and then sort of saw the light later on, but if they got this thing called, used to be called Market Value adjustments. So it's basically, it's a fund that just goes up every year. But the underlying assets, obviously, they go up and down every day. They own equities, bonds, whatever. And then if someone wants to get the money out, then they do this adjustment, and they basically give you what you would have had if you just in a unit linked fund. But if I looked at this correctly, if the fund, say, falls, the underlying assets fall by more than 5% then they'll just adjust it so you will experience you're paying all the extra for this smoothing thing. But if there's any sort of material adjustment to the underlying assets, you're going to get that anyway. So it seems to me, unless I'm misreading it, and Prue can get in touch if they want, or energy, yeah, and just because it seems like a complete waste of time. So let's say you, you had a like a covid, your market's down 20 30% you're going to get this adjustment kick in within this fund in order just to reflect the actual fall in the underlying value, asset value. So it looks like, yeah, a complex product. So that doesn't really deliver much in the way of Sue. Solutions, and that's my take on it. Best of all, yeah, anything

Andy Hart:

that's overly complex is not good in the fund management world. It only plays into the hands of the fund manager. It does say about some limit. It limits it to seven and a half percent withdrawals per year. Also in the article, it does, I mean, the reason why they're obviously launching this fund, the pre fund range now stand at 64, billion. That's a huge fund range. So you know, it's another reason why they want to, want to get involved in it. Over to you.

Nick Lincoln:

Nicholas, yeah, just to close on that, as a wise man once said, with these products, you're giving up to mask the temporary decline, to mask the temporary downward volatility, you're giving up a large chunk of the permanent advance. And that will always be true. I've just found the story I alluded to earlier about cash ISIS on LinkedIn, by a guy called Robert Lewis, who runs an IFA firm called Celtic financial. So the link to that is in the so called show notes, right? Oh, Smithy, yes, I feel your pain on this one, because we're Oh, my three of us are going

Alan Smith:

through this god. First of all, Nick, can you? Can you lower your hand just I've always wanted to tell you that manage you, manage your admin. This is if you, if you own, or, I think, Director, whatever, of a limited company in the UK, you've got this digital ID process to go through. And I've been being chased on this for a while, for with Shireen and then our accountants, and get around, it's like, because I knew it was going to be a ball ache, and I thought, right, thought, right, fine. I'm going to sit down get all this stuff done. I can't be I've shared some of this stuff with you boys on our private message, but you don't get that as I couldn't possibly it was, by the way, it's still not done. It just went round and round the houses. He asked you to download an app, and you download the app, and then you got to upload your ID. But the only ID would accept was a majesty services veteran card. So, and I haven't been in Majesty's armed services, so the only thing you could do is a veteran card. He says, we are going to be able to take additional documentation later. So thank you. And so this is, go on the website, and then you go to website, and you can't do and on the website, it's just, it's like entering, what do you call it, the seven circles of hell, because then the website sends you back to the app, and the app sends you back to the website, none of which work. And then you then I tried to do a chat bot thing, and just was waiting and waiting, waiting, waiting. And eventually I got a message with some literally one hour, I just had it all in the background, and an hour later, somebody gets in touch with me, and then she tells me to remove, take, remove the at the app that I downloaded, and reinstall it. And you just think it, oh, my God. I mean, how long is this going to take? And and it was just And it went on. This is just a small sample of the experience I went through. And then I tried it because my accountant said, I think it's fixed now. So I tried again the following day. It's still not done, and I would rather just see them in court or something just, you know, sue me for not doing this, because I've got, I've got the receipts. Are there screenshots of everything? I tried my best. It was a shit show. And I just, I just wanted to share that if anyone else is going through it, you will have to experience this that I experienced. I don't agree with it anyway, having to do ID for this stuff. I think that's with with, with the the amount of cyber breaches that government websites have. I don't think it's great to show your passport details, personal detail. I mean,

Nick Lincoln:

I've done it for one of my companies. I'm not sure which bloody one, because it's not, I think it might be values division. If not, it's one of the, obviously one of the to do one seem to sort of suggest which company you're doing it for. It's like, so I've done it for one anyway, and I'll just wait so get more chaser emails. But it is, it is a bully.

Alan Smith:

Oh, it's terrible, terrible. Okay. Oh yeah. Just, just one other thing on a different subject. If there are anyone you know, there is not the conversation we'll come back to, I'm sure. But this is, it's been quite active in the last year, 18 months or so, financial planners kind of seeing the light, looking to move to other firms and embrace proper, full fat financial planning. Get involved with that. There's, you know, there's a there's a number of people that we all know that are kind of migrating across, setting up their own businesses, going to other firms. Right now, lots of activity. It seems that there are, for some reason, don't know why, but in Norwich, there's quite a few really good financial planners in Norwich. So if you are a firm based in that neck of the woods, and you are looking to hire, looking to bring in good quality people who want to do the right thing by your clients. There's a number of them around, and again, like we've done in the past, send them over to James. James Barden seems to be able to help people at least have a conversation with so just wanted, it was a request from a few planners in the Norwich area, just to say, Can you give us a shout out every,

Unknown:

every if a owner in the Norwich area is now looking around at his team going, was it you?

Nick Lincoln:

Well, well, there we go. And we have, we have free market. Isn't that future show in the topical topic section at a later date, which is good stuff. Okay, I'm just call. Interest of time and the conscious of that we have a guest. So you've done the full fat financial planning firms in Norwich. Thank you. Watch the Ireland financial news desk.

Unknown:

Yeah, there was so many things here. I'm literally going to fly through them, because they're all kind of relevant right now. So first thing I put links to all of these, black bee loan Note provider went belly up. They're bringing the owner of the firm before the courts. Actually, by the time this goes out, he'll have been before the courts. Solar 21 in the news again. So they're arguing over who the liquidators might be. That they feel that the investors are being unreasonable, which I thought was bloody ironic. The good news about these low note guys all been before the courts is, I think the public are being, you know, educated that this is Danger, danger zone, Central Bank of New Rules coming in about regulated ifas selling unregulated products. So it's all good bit of a mad story, a guy who passed away last year. He ran a business in the Midlands in Ireland, and they went to sell his business back to the various providers. And it seems that there was an awful lot of fraudulent activity in this 3.7 million gone. So we can get rid of all these low note providers and all that. But as we have always said, there will always be bad actors, and we just can't legislate for everybody. Unfortunately, people should follow in the business post. Investor Finn, so it's a fictional character. It's actually four business journalists in the business post, and they're going to start, they've embarked on this, starting off their investment journey. You don't agree with everything that they they're doing, obviously, because some of it is direct shares, but they are doing some ETFs, that kind of stuff. But their last article was a, was a big kind of expose on the tax treatment of the funds basically here in Ireland, which is really good that it's getting an awful lot of an awful lot of coverage now, because there is this tax review to come up over the coming months, which so we would love to see that bloody deemed exit tax after eight years, just done away with, and the tax rates reduce, it would definitely open the doors to creating an awful lot of wealth in Ireland. And then finally, the Elon Musk and Michael O'Leary spat over the last week or so. We're very proud of Michael O'Leary, and I think he did a great job standing up to somebody. He just made fun. He made a joke out of the fact that somebody was publicly calling him a retard, which I don't think is okay anyway. Enough said.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, good stuff. Thank you for that. Donald Trump, no um, platform, cash rates, ongoing thing. We talked about it last year. Still a big bloody thing. I got an email from some source showing me, and I'm quoting AJ bell here, but it applies to various platforms that don't seem to give much back to the clients in terms of cash rates. AJ Bell their cash rates when you have money on deposit in a cash on your in your platform wrapper, start at 1.19% go up to 2.13 if you've got a bit more money with them, comparing that with, say, transact, which is they're paying 3.6 I believe, currently. And it just and I cocked up earlier, so the article, but by the IFA was on this subject, not on Bloody cash ISIS, my apologies. I know. My apologies to Robert Lewis, he wrote a very good article about this and saying, the platform of due diligence is not all just about looking at the quotes and the costing the platform. Because if you've got a platform that's paying you significantly more cash on cash than a rival platform, that is an effect. That's that's an investment return that should be factored in. And I still think it's pretty outrageous. And platforms are all different. Friend of the show fundment sponsor the show fragments, they don't charge a platform fee on their cash. Other firms do charge a price. It's just, it's a real it's a real mess. And I do I want the FCA to get involved. I always think regulation generally leads to other bad things and which leads to more regulation. It's the opposite of a virtuous circle. But I don't know you just if you're new advisor, if you're a newbie, just have a look at the cash thing. Have a look at the cash thing. Andrew's week, wagging his finger at me. What have I

Andy Hart:

done now? No, no, no, Smith, you just said, Yeah, vicious, vicious, vicious circle.

Unknown:

Vicious Circle. Thank you. Well, can we just give another shout out to Robertson? Yeah, just sorry.

Alan Smith:

Robert Nick is completely messed up. Your contribution. I think he keeps putting his hand up on the digital thing and they're not putting

Nick Lincoln:

it down. So do all the background that I do here.

Alan Smith:

But I think that's a good point. I remember looking at one thing that the cash rates that transact were paying effectively covered the cost of the platform fee.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, correct, because the average holdings about eight to 10% in cash, therefore the rebate would be equivalent to a platform. But yeah, that doesn't come up on any other sourcing.

Alan Smith:

So. Yeah, you didn't. You wouldn't do it as a comparative, if you're just looking at pure what do they charge on basis points for this million pounds SIP or something?

Andy Hart:

It definitely becomes, you know,

Alan Smith:

yeah, really worthwhile. Good provider. Great point. Nick, okay.

Nick Lincoln:

Thank you very much, missy. Thank you. Redeemed my eyes, right? Come to the final thing, I think, on the, on the, on the slaver. Today, while Andy's going through this, I'm going to I've make a phone call guys, as discussed earlier, so bear with me, and over

Andy Hart:

to you, right. Okay, so this is the famous Vanguard fund range of Vanguard life strategy. They're making some big changes. They are reducing their fees. This fund range is currently sitting at 52 billion. So it's a very successful fund range in the UK. Their fees are going from the quoted annual management charge of 0.22 to 0.2 and they're also reducing their UK Home bias. I suppose a brief point on this. I think they're currently UK Home bias on, let's say 100% the Vanguard 100% life Strategy Fund is 25% of the fund is is UK exposure,

Unknown:

which, that's an awful lot. Andy, isn't it huge?

Andy Hart:

Across, you know, if they were to do it, currently representing what the UK is, I think it's about three and a half percent and declining. So the fact they've gone for 25% is massive. However, in 2025 that was good news for the fund range, yeah. UK outperformed, you know, a lot of the other markets that they were involved in, but they're moving it now back down, or sorry, from 25% to 20% so they're reducing the fees and reducing the home bias in their bond portfolio. Some of them are 35% UK exposure, and they're moving that down to 20 Yeah. So I saw on the do, people are not really going to be that bothered. I mean, if they reduce it down, if they reduce it up, people are just gonna

Alan Smith:

have on the UK, UK equity exposure that, okay, that seemed like a rounding error. 20 I saw that the headlines were Vanguard, you know, truly reduce Why is that a rounding error? 20% to 25 25% to 20% it's still massively overweight,

Andy Hart:

yeah, yeah. Sorry, still massively overweight? Yes, correct? Yes, yeah. I mean to take a to say, to say, should have gone from 25 to market cap, 10, you know, market cap.

Unknown:

Yeah, that's an awful lot of money. Be moving in a 56 billion fund, though, I guess so

Alan Smith:

well, see that sort of thing. I think about relating it back to Nick's earlier point about Rachel Reeves and moving around the deck chairs and the Titanic like move your ISO rules and complexity. Look at the billions. It's just in that fund that have just washed out of the UK in the, you know, just really 5% of whatever billions and all future assets going

Andy Hart:

into was in the wrong place, in the first place. It shouldn't have been so much in the UK, really, they sort of, but it's

Alan Smith:

still 20% which is, you say the mark market cap weight is three and a half or something, yeah. So it's a huge bet on the UK

Andy Hart:

good news that they've reduced the fees, which is what they've done that fund range from the beginning, yeah, exactly what it was at the beginning. But they've chipped it down by about two basis points every couple of years. And they're slightly reduced the assets. They scale allocation location.

Unknown:

So, yeah, in terms of framing and like saying that has gone from 22 to 20, you know, 10 attend, or 25 to 20 call,

Andy Hart:

point two, two to point two. Oh, the reduction.

Unknown:

Call, yeah, yeah, you framed up.

Andy Hart:

Sorry, I frame it as it's going from point two to call, which is basically free to point to, which is also basically free. Like, for me, it's so irrelevant the fund costs being that low. You know, you get access to global markets for basically free.

Unknown:

Well actually, and it's not telling, not telling Vanguard how to market their stuff, but yeah, because it's totally issue off, you should be saying that's a 10% discount.

Alan Smith:

But what Vanguard do really well. The leading company I see who do this, as they continue to grow, obviously, they've got fixed costs running a business as they you know, another 10 billion, another 50 billion. They give the benefit back to the customer. And I wish more companies would do that. I'll say no more about that. But has come some, some funds have gone from a couple of billion to 3040, 50 billion and more, and they don't reduce, they don't reduce the fees Vanguard.

Andy Hart:

Vanguard's biggest Fund, which I think is the vtsa x, is over a trillion, and I think they charge 0.02 in the US, wow, I don't know, 0.02 is a chunky amount of money on a fund over a trillion. But I mean, yeah, it's free, it's free. It's basically free. Yeah, all right, over to you, Nicholas.

Unknown:

Nick, I'd say you're muted. It's just on a bit of a we don't

Alan Smith:

have any guests coming on. Do we who demand professionalism?

Unknown:

Still muted. Nick, you're still muted. Nick,

Andy Hart:

he might be on the phone. He's still muted. You're muted. Is he speaking?

Alan Smith:

Maybe he's speaking to our guest. I know

Nick Lincoln:

your little thing is even odd. You need to press sorry, right? Right potatoes. Let's move on to the meat of potatoes, and we're gonna let the guest in so

Alan Smith:

absolute shambles.

Ola Abdul:

Let's hope this works. Let's replay that bit.

Alan Smith:

Here he is, hey, there's somebody at the door,

Nick Lincoln:

suitably petrified as we play the silly jingle. Ola Abdul, how are you, sir?

Ola Abdul:

I'm very good guys. This is some dramatic setup you've got. What is it? What is that noise I go as I was coming in there, that was very loud whenever

Nick Lincoln:

we have a guest on the show. Dear TRAPPIST, this is owner Abdul, the founder and CEO of fundment. And of course, as you're listening to this on on Thursday, this is the day of fundment live their advisor edge event. Three of the trap pack will be there. Will be here today to to to meet with all the Trappists and all the fundment advisors. Looks like a great, great event. Ola, you've obviously put some time and attention into it. I hope the day goes as well as you're you're wishing it to go. Thank you for coming on the show. We We know you're a busy, busy boy, so we're going to fire some questions at you and just see how the how the conversation goes earlier, but it's very loosey goosey, and you can say what you like, just nothing slanderous, if that's okay.

Ola Abdul:

That's gonna be easy, but I'll try. Okay, good.

Andy Hart:

Okay, good man. Oh, look. Thank you very much for coming on the show, my friend. I've known you for a few years, and you're doing some great stuff at fundment, so I am opening the questions. So when you founded fundment, what problem were you trying to solve?

Ola Abdul:

Oh, wow. Look, you know, people have often asked me news and you know, there are, there is, there is polite answer, but there is also the kind of, I don't know what you call it, sort of hero. And so which one do you want? Both or polite, polite or heroic one? Okay, I'll give you both. So obviously, heroic is our Oh, on the ETF but I also noticed that advisors, you know to these days actually still don't use ETFs Well, purely because of the infrastructures that support it just aren't there to make that easily accessible. And it's still issues that, you know, I get invited to speak on every now and then. So I thought funding could be that company to build the infrastructure, to build up to Power ETFs in the way people use it for financial planning. That was what I wanted to do. But it didn't take long to realize that our far bigger problems, you know, around financial planning workflow and, you know, building funding, you know, but since then to address that problem. So yes, it started with the product problem, but then it's much more of our financial planning problem that we're trying to help solve.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, great stuff. Ola, I think there's a theme currently with fundment that you're helping advisors. The idea is, the message you want to get across is, you're helping advisors to move faster, to act faster. What does that mean? In practice?

Ola Abdul:

It's not a slogan, you know, and we're not trying to trick people, believe it or not. We actually are trying to minimize the gap between customer outcome and the judgment that you need to take between them. So the work advice is too it's very elegant, as you know, they do all this great work with understanding their client, listening to the client, you know, and then they make it, you know, a call on what is right home for that client. But often, between that process that they expect, we're going to get things good transfers. Just never mind. It's just not visible. You don't even know what's going on. All the workflows that you need to manage, drawdowns, making payments on time and accurate, just don't function properly. So the whole theme is to try and hopefully help advisors begin to understand that we understand exactly what is involved, and we're building to solve that. So, yes, is to shorten that time and that gap between, you know, very great customer outcome, which is what everyone wants, at the judgment the advisors are putting it. Does that make sense? Did you get it?

Nick Lincoln:

Nick, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's your platform is very, very slick. And I think you were, and you still are. You're ahead of the digital curve compared to other platforms.

Alan Smith:

Can I just ask about that? Just to be clear, just to jump in on that question. Ola, you and your team and software engineers, you build your own technology in house, unlike some of the others who outsource. Is that? Is that correct? So.

Ola Abdul:

Sorry. Nick, I missed that. I think that was a break there. Sorry, if you just want to come back,

Alan Smith:

sorry, it was me. It was me. Alan Ola, I was just looking for some clarity on the actual underlying technology. I understand. You build it in house. You've got your own engineers. You build it in house. You don't buy it outside and sort of wrap around it you build your own tech. Is that right?

Ola Abdul:

That's absolutely right. And it's not because we enjoy paying it's just that that's how you actually help to move the industry forward. Genuinely, there's far too many moving parts, you know, as you build, most people think, you know, a platform. You know, I've had people say that it's just a portal and it's a trade that's it done. You know, people often, in my view, on the sale maybe, you know, I don't know, for every reason, what these platforms actually, we believe there are so many moving parts to it, and I've been on record for saying you could easily carve out multiple businesses within what we call the platform today. You could carve out a payment business out of it, you could carve out a pension business out of it. You could carve out reporting, basically, carve out trading, I mean, these all sorts of things. So therefore, to really deliver that sort of really simple workflow that just, you know that I think it's an industry knowledge. I'll just say it anyway. We're working on setting up, I should say, an insurance company based out of doubly, I know we've been, this is a tricky one. I think I've been told not to talk about it,

Unknown:

but I can't friends all out. We've no one

Alan Smith:

listens to this anyway,

Ola Abdul:

I know, tell us more. So yeah, we've been, we've been engaging with the CBI, you know, I think we're going to set up, you know, the product over there for next DAC, bring it back into the UK to ensure our own offshore and, you know, shortly afterwards, an onshore bond wrapper, all of that within a single, you know, infrastructure that you know already. It's been well received by UK advisors. So, yeah, we Alan. You know, it's a long winded way to answer your question, but

Unknown:

it's great. Can I jump in there? I I'm the connection is great. I might have missed some of that, but did you say you're getting a license with the CBI, the Central Bank of Ireland, or

Alan Smith:

yes, yeah, into the UK called,

Unknown:

yeah, yeah. Okay. So, so that I did get that piece, right? So, so therefore, can we expect the fundman platform in Ireland? Will the advisors in Ireland be able to use the fundman platform? Is that part of the plan? Oh, please, Kyle,

Ola Abdul:

I don't believe so maybe that's not I want to take offline. I like to understand the Irish market more. I, you know, I don't know anything about it, other than setting up the insurance company on which, you know, we've been spending a lot of time trying to understand it. And so far, I think coming a bit of you know, media experts on that, but on the wider, you know, Irish markets, or the pensions and everything else, how people do it, I don't know. So I would love to tap your brain on what's the best way to do that. I don't believe we will, but I would like to know anyway, just to see what's possible. Yeah.

Unknown:

Well, look, we need, we need a bit of competition over here, and we certainly need competition from a company that's putting tech at that at the at the leading edge of everything that they're doing. Can I just ask another question? Because obviously we're, we're probably a bit, a good bit behind here in Ireland in terms of the capability of the platform tech, right? So we're kind of just almost catching up to what you guys in the UK have been used to over the last probably decade or more. Where do you see this going? Because obviously, as a tech company, you can't rest on your laurels and say, we've built this now and we're gonna, we're, you know, that's it now. Let's just get the customers in. Yeah, you have to be looking ahead all the time. And obviously we've got AI and everyone is saying that, you know, the tech advancements over the next, you know, not even five years, the next 123, years are going to be enormous. Where, where do you see it going for the platform business? What are the big structural shifts we can expect from from fundment going forward?

Ola Abdul:

I think fund means, you know, as you rightly said, in fact, I spoke to one very, very senior, very experienced platform boss and CEO, many, many years ago. And I think that that just clarified for me to shift, you know, in terms of where funded is and where those companies were, who said that, you know, 10. Tech is kind of a cost center that just stays in a little corner, and it's going to need to be upgraded at some point, and every tech will get to that stage. And I don't seem to agree with that, because if you think about it, some of the companies that we use every day that sort of change our way of life, really lives, whether that is Google or Netflix or whatever you don't you never hear them saying they're doing the tech upgrade. Why? Because they're in a continuously building mode. They're always building. They're always responding. They're always, you know, taking into account changing preferences. How consumers think, you know, are they building a product? And these are genuine tech companies and not, you know, media companies. They're genuine companies in media. So you could argue, fund, it is in that mold with, you know, tech company within financial services, yes, we have heavy conduct obligations. We subsequently comply with all sorts of very demanding about necessary regulations, and that's fine, but we still innovate within that. So I think funding you should expect it to continue to evolve. We're not the company we were when we launched six, seven years ago, we're certainly not the company that we were there today. And you could bet everything on it that won't be the same company five years, that will be a lot better. And again, you know, as you know, as I keep saying, I think the way people do financial planning is change a lot. You know, planners no rises, no longer sell product now is a genuine, holistic, you know, financial structure that has been put in place, and you need a platform that is designed for that new world. And that's us, which is why, when you log into fundment Today, you know, most firms who realize it doesn't be, it's not a brokerage setup that you probably still see. You know, on some of the legacy platforms about your login, it's all about trade. Is trade back. We support that, but we build more around, you know, deeper understanding of how do you know, people go with funding system is very easy, you know, they will love it. It's those understandings, you know, that underpin how we built it, rather than it'll build a very simple brokerage product and really easy. Now people walk at the bottom. I love, I love

Unknown:

the concept of, like, we're constantly upgrading, so there's not going to be a big upgrade. So, so you know that the dinosaur, the legacy providers are like, well, the system won't allow that. You know, it's music to our ears that there's new stuff in bets. That's like you're saying. It's like you don't hear about Netflix or doing an upgrade. It's just you're exactly, you know exactly,

Ola Abdul:

all of clients now they have to make sure that everything you do you know, you don't disrupt the service and experiments you get, you're supposed to get better. I think Alan's got a question.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, Ola, if I just want to pivot a little bit, it sounds fantastic. You are a relatively new entrant to the marketplace. And I had a thing I just was feeling a few years ago, there's been a bit of a land grab. Companies advisors have sort of adopted their platform of choice, and then it's going to be make it tougher for incumbents. And then I started paying attention to what you guys were doing in terms of what I would call it is like building community. Like, for example, you've got this huge event on today, dinner in the evening, you and I bumped into each other last week and had a conversation about this. I'm intrigued as to you know why you've decided to sort of be focused on community building and gathering advisors together. I mean, is that, I guess that's been a very definite strategy that you have embarked upon. But share a bit more about your thoughts around building community

Ola Abdul:

that is very important to us and for us, it's not just marketing. Is a reality of who we are really. This is, you know, just, you know, since funding began, you know, we've always got the, not just the benefit of doubt, but also the Alliance. With advisors who really want to go on and do well for themselves or their clients. And you know, a lot of them have been with us from the very beginning. Developers understand the market. You know? I mean, as I've said before, I was not a financial planner. Have. Never worked in the industry at all, the asset management side, but through advice, I've learned a lot over the years, challenges that they face in their business, the reasons why they'll be open to walking away from long established platforms to come to ourselves so we continue to get that. And over time, you just find you have, you know, a community of really, really helpful firms around us. So what you're beginning to see now is, I don't want to say, to formalize, is it being formal? It's just us, you know, really tapping into what just grew organically. We didn't set out trying to build a community. It just happened around us and as a good place to be. It just showed that when you really put your heart towards something, and people can see that and they want to work with you. Developing this, oh, funded is now something that is owned by all of those firms as well, because their input in developing it has been super vital, really, that's great. Andy's got Andy Scott, yeah, go on, Andy, yeah, I'm

Andy Hart:

gonna ship with a quick question. Ola, so working with lots of different firms, lots of different advisors, with a platform, you can have a lot of different, you know, bells and whistles and features and functions, and obviously you've got to be quite discerning with what you build and implement into the into the system. My question really is, what have you deliberately chosen to not include in the platform? Like, is there anything that is a recurring theme that you're getting asked about that you've specifically chosen to to avoid because it's a bit of a distraction? That's my apart from Ireland.

Ola Abdul:

Yeah, yeah. People keep asking us, you know, just, you know, to give a straight answer to that one, to build a CRM and we've often said, No, that's not when you know we're not going to build that. People have asked us, you know, to consider, you know, Cash Flow Planning, again, we're not doing that. There are some good companies out there in that space, even on the platform side, you know, we don't want to go into a feature more, you know, we don't believe in that, you know, which is why, you know, the way people do due diligence actually think it's kind of outdated now, you know, most times just go there. I want Isa. I want this. I want drop down. Does it do PCLs? Does it do phase drawn, all that sort of thing. Fine. It's good to sort out that we're not really into that. We believe more in the outcome, you know, in how long it takes to actually get things done in itself, time we resolve, you know, give back to advisors in the work we can actually take away from them. You know, I think someone also said, you know, when platforms began, a lot of them push work. To advise is, you gotta complete the form. You gotta complete this, complete that. Call them chase and whatnot. We are reverse engineering that we want to take walk away, so that you can actually concentrate on what matters really. So yes, you know, we, you know, we think very deeply about what feature we are building, if it doesn't lead towards, you know, very good client outcome, we just won't do it. Or if we don't think we have any advantage to bring to the process, you won't see us there. You're not going to see us in a launch at a multi Asset Fund, for example, because we think we get a few basis points, you know, off the back of it that won't see but you probably see us investing more in anything that could drive the financial planning process. Are you going to see a lot more investment in that space by us going forward? Nick, Oh, good. We're on our questions. No, I think so.

Nick Lincoln:

I mean, the I'm going to the tech thing, the ownership of tech Ola, is such an important thing, I think that, you know, as a USP, I am not telling you how to do your job, but it sounds like I'm saying I would be pushing that harder and harder, because we've seen these problems with the, you know, these, these platforms that are run by, powered by Fnz and other ones, they have these horrendous issues when they re platform, or when they when they try and upgrade their platform, and having the software in house that you're continually honing all the time, just sharpening the saw all the time, is such, such a big thing. I think again, younger advisors maybe don't appreciate that. And I just think it's, I think it's massive thanks to your men's credit as well.

Ola Abdul:

Thank you. Yeah, we are working very hard, you know, in making sure that the wider industry, yeah, understand exactly the power of, you know, for the of the technology we're building here, and when people say the service is good and it's simple to use, it speaks precisely because of that. And we're going to keep working on making sure that the rest of the industry knows formats and it knows it really, really intimately. I mean, we're lucky today. We already have well over eight. Some lead firms, you know, varying sizes, some nationals and big ones already. So we're already there. Thanks, Andy. Thank you very much for that small applause, although I can't hear it. So what are

Andy Hart:

we going to hit? 1000 firms, hopefully

Ola Abdul:

before the end of this year, and I will be sure to shout about that when we when we get to that milestone. But yeah, so yeah, but we will love pretty much every firm we care about financial planning to truly understand who we are. We're not into the sort of marketing and social media, and I'm not sliding off marketing and social media at all. We're just a very real company with real people that just truly want to help move the industry forward, and we get no other support that gets us there

Andy Hart:

and and for the listeners and the viewers, you've recently moved into your new HQ, I say recently, it's probably a couple of years now, how's that going? Is that going really well? You're doing a lot of events there, and

Ola Abdul:

it's going really well. Yes, we Yeah, it's going well. We moved in September 2024 so that's, well, just over 1516, months ago. So, yeah, it's been it's been good. We've scaled up the team over there. We moved into two floors within the building. The sixth and seventh, I think our head count is now. You know, approaching was 80. Now there's not enough room anymore for the team, so I take another floor in that building as we continue to scale up technology and operations team right here, we've intentionally kept the seventh floor for the advisors you talked about community. We have a lot of advisors who come to see us, see their clients over there. We also love events there, some of them quarterly. I believe we have two or three events at some point this year outside, you know, first annual conference, which takes place in two days time, three days time, two days. Well, actually today is Monday. So yeah, exactly Thursday. Yeah, yeah. So I mean that this building as well is, you know, partly, you know, a commitment as well, to just bring in the financial planning community together. So yes, it's going well, Andy is going really well. You've been few times, haven't you? Well?

Alan Smith:

I was, yeah, I was, I was just gonna, just gonna say that, yeah, we've, we've been there. We met in in your fabulous office last year. I mean, we were sort of discussing various things, incredible space you've got there. And you're right. This is what I keep coming back to, this idea of community advisors get there, you've got all sorts of events and get togethers. And I'm just kind of trying to think that there will be people watching or listening to this episode that are probably interested in learning a bit more about fundment. What's the best way for them to engage Connect? Can they register for an event even though they're not using you guys yet, they just want to learn more. What's the next

Ola Abdul:

our events? Any financial planning firm you do not you do not have to be a fundamental user. You are absolutely welcome to attend our event. A lot of those events are published and sort of marketed through our social media pages. They tend to sort of get filled up very, very fast. I believe our conference was sold out within few days. We're expecting 400 firms people there anyway. So it's one of those where, yeah, people need to, sort of, you know, jump in once those events released myself, the team, distribution team, were all over on LinkedIn. You could get us there, or just email us. You can, you know, my email is personally easy to get all@funding.com you can't miss that. Really, I get emails from everyone. So honestly, just come after us, you know, reach out to us, ask us questions. We're an open book. Really, you could ask us everything about the business, you know, where we are today, where we're going. You know, it just, Jessica denies. You know, building for for a long, long time.

Nick Lincoln:

Brilliant, great stuff. I think, I think we've got any more questions for owner. I think,

Alan Smith:

I think we know that's been brilliant, really, really helped. Great insight. Really appreciate that.

Nick Lincoln:

Look at looking looking forward to today's event, because today is Thursday, although not Monday, today's Thursday, right? Looking forward to this a lot. I just want to close on this thing about community. I think we've you know, with what you're doing at fund money, it's not just a platform, it's not just a platform, it's a community building there. What we built on with the real advisor podcast is a community there's this. There's a crying need for for somewhere where advisors quality, financial planning, that advice. Congregate and talk and chew the fat and learn and help each other along. And I think what you're doing is amazing. What and you know, if you're considering a slick platform that lets you do lets you focus on the financial planning, the platform doesn't get in the way you do a lot. You do yourself a massive favor by looking at fun and kicking the tars on fun. And I mean, they're partners of the show. We we love to be in line with them, because they share a lot of our values. I'll let you go, fella, thank you. Always keep your browser window open, but just, just if you can keep it open after I kicked you out because it needs the files need to upload in the background.

Andy Hart:

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you, friend. Thank you very much.

Alan Smith:

Thanks. Thanks all. I'll see you soon, right?

Nick Lincoln:

Very good, very good, very, very super switched on guy. And, yeah, it's a, it's a really, really, really good. I mean, they were, they were doing digital stuff, fully digital stuff, I think before the Wuhan lab league kind of forced other firms to DocuSign, and they've got DocuSign baked into their actually baked into their platform. You know, the third party,

Alan Smith:

proper tech, tech company. They're not just a tech an insurance company that's bought some aging tech, correct? And together, from the ground up, they've got their engineers on site, in house, building things continually. Yeah, really good

Nick Lincoln:

company software. I can't tell you how important there is okay, let's agree, great stuff, and let me look forward to seeing something.

Unknown:

Do you want to say something? Nick? Your hand is raised, yeah, thanks.

Nick Lincoln:

Just doing the soundboard car. You won't have to do it yourself. You can have a go the TRAPPIST questions, because I can see posters at the front door. Though I can see my soundboard is completely frozen. Okay. There she goes. There she goes. The bulging sack of TRAPPIST questions up my drive. If you want to leave a question for the trap pack to answer, look at the pinned tweet on x, the pinned X on tweet, on Twitter, whatever, and or in the so called show notes, the link is always there. We do get through them. We do them in order that they're submitted. So we're still a few months behind. We've got a few more questions to go to. So let's have a look and see who this one is from. This is Wilson R, we had a Wilson M, last week. Wilson R, I think this is the same person just changed their initial. He says, or she says, let's say, let's go with she let's go with shit. She says, seems to be a theme going on where advisors are demonizing the fact we earn from AUM and are proposing a fee model. What do you think about this? Is like to be changed in the future, and if so, how will it affect the industry? Oh, crikey, Alan, I mean, you're Don't,

Unknown:

don't profession. When did you upload this question? Because I looked earlier on. There was no question last minute before

Nick Lincoln:

the show recorded. All right.

Andy Hart:

Then over to Alan, yeah, so the Aum fee model is the worst fee model out there, except for all of the others.

Alan Smith:

Alan, I've softened my stance. I think. Did he say this? R Wilson, she said that advisors are being demonized.

Nick Lincoln:

I'm not sure advisors are demonizing. The fact,

Alan Smith:

okay, depends which advisor is their party, the knacks or whatever. I don't know. All right, well, I've been vocal about this in the past. I've softened my stance. The fee model should be the fee model that works for the advisory firm and the client is happy to work with and understand. I do think we ought to be more pricing, and that all the stuff that sits with Pricing and Value is a really, really important part of any commercial enterprise. You should pay more attention and not necessarily just rely on what everyone else does. I like the concept of more like dynamic pricing. There are some things you should be if everything defaults to I'm charging 1% of assets regardless of the service experience, the clients, issues, challenges, complexity. I think that's I do think that's a flawed model. I don't mean I don't mean I don't necessarily think that everyone should be in a retainer or an hourly rate. I think people should be a bit more thoughtful about their pricing. And I mean that from both the clients experience, but equally as important from an advisory firm's experience. I think we've touched on this in the past, and we might come back to it again, because I continue to hear stories speaking to other advisory firms who are seeing some real threats to their revenue model, because as clients spend down their assets, clients give away money to their children, grandchildren, pay off their debt, pay off mortgage, help the people on the property ladder, all that sort of stuff, and then clients are doing exactly what we've been telling them to do for years, which is to spend their bloody money and and when someone goes into retirement and they're in drawdown, we all know there's a lot more complexity in that world, all of it, and all the new legislation has come up in inheritance tax rules pertaining to pensions, there's a lot more complexity, a lot more risk, a lot more work, and at the same time, the advisor is earning less on a depleting asset value. On this simple ad Valeri model. All I'm saying, you know, make your own rules. Everyone can run their business how they choose to do and engage with their clients, but maybe, just maybe, being a bit more thoughtful about pricing strategy might be the sensible thing to do. That's it.

Unknown:

Yeah, I agree. Alan and Andy, you couldn't have put a better like it isn't perfect. It's far from perfect, in fact, but the beauty of it, we mentioned it earlier on. Excuse me, about investments and simplicity. Investments, it is quite simple, and it's quite easy to explain. And I would say anybody setting out, you know, you got to figure this out. Like even Alan, you saying that you've softened a bit, you know, we're trying to figure this out still, to get, can we get a better model, something that works a little bit better for us and for our clients? So I think this is work in progress for everybody. And in Ireland, like it's, it's, we still have commissions. So, like, it's, yeah, you know that the range is, like, absolutely enormous. But, yeah, figure something out that works for you. Just, just do it with integrity, I would say, you know, and do it across, you know, whatever you decide, everyone gets treated the same way, but you might have tears or whatever, based on what Alan said there, you know, so, but, yeah, it's not perfect. You're not going to find it's like trying to find a perfect investment. It doesn't exist either.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, hey, here. I think that's the key point, the integrity element. Because some people focus on the fee structure being the integrity where it was actually it's the individual in the firm. Tell me the most, highest integrity fee charging structure out there. Okay, got it, and I'll put a crook in charge of that free structure, and they will cause damage. You. Tell me the slimiest fee structure that you that you deem and put put angels behind it, and they'll do their best for their clients. So the integrity is the individual in the firm, not really the fee structure. I think many people have tried different fee structures, charging flat fees for people that are accumulating and Henry's, and they've just caused themselves no end of pain, lots of advisors have switched to fixed fees, charging on net worth, charging on investable assets, and then have switched back to ad valorem. So there's a lot of experiences that have concluded that it is the worst except all the others. So yeah.

Alan Smith:

Well, yeah, I think I've shared some information in our private group this morning about something I came across. And again, we might come back to this. You use a phrase in the past, Andy about pointing the guns in the right direction. I think fee models are important. They're not the number one thing. As you rightly say, you have the perfect fee model with a crook as an advisor. That's suboptimal, and it's not the part of the mix for sure, firms should be a bit more thoughtful about it. Apply the thing that works for them, whatever it is, and thing that works for their clients, because there are so many more challenges. And we often talk some things we can talk about public some things we can't talk about, but we see what I would generally call sharp practice operating around the sectors of sections of the industry, and that's far more important. Some of the work that goes on that is it doesn't have high integrity, but a beautiful pricing model. So we should probably spend more time on that than arguing over watch V model is best, because, as you all say, there is no best.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, okay, great, fair enough. Okay, let's move Alan, lower your hand.

Unknown:

I think you actually raised your hand whilst you were talking, which is this culture corner? Yeah, okay. Can I just say one thing, I got really cross about something earlier on, and I'm not sorry that I got really cross, because I'm not going on public record about that stuff. But what I will say trap live is coming up, and as part of trap live. We do have a questions and answer session that will not be recorded, and I'm more than happy to address said issues in the questions and answers session in trap live. And I'm more than happy to stand my own ground in that anyway, I have two things in culture corner.

Alan Smith:

We're going to sell ringside seats for that conversation. You sold another 20 tickets now,

Unknown:

and I am, I am, yeah, I'm totally okay to stand my ground on that one, totally and utterly anyway. And Rich Roll podcast, I can't even remember what my culture, course, I know Dr will bushes, yeah, that's really good, and that was kind of appropriate for me in true Michael kits style. Be sure to listen to the end. It gets better. It's a long one, though. And the other book, I've had a bad back, so I've been lying on my back for a lot of the last couple of weeks, and a lot of I haven't been able to work. So I've been doing. A lot of thinking, there's been a lot of great stuff, and I'm going, Oh, geez, yeah, I should do that, because I've taken the time out. So this book is Nick Can you call it out? Because I haven't got the notes and I forget

Nick Lincoln:

what slow productivity, the lost art of a company without

Unknown:

burning Cal Newport, and how I found him. Actually, he was also a guest on the Rich Roll podcast about a year and a half ago, but I didn't love the book, but I love the concept of actually, sometimes slowing down to focus on just a few things, and then doing those with real quality and focusing in on just a few things. I love the concept of that. So, yeah, they're my two culture corners.

Alan Smith:

He's very good, by the way, Carl Newport seen if he's got his own podcast, deep work. Deep Work was his original book, just all the distractions that come at us and just

Unknown:

folks, the book isn't fabulous. I will say that. Yeah, check,

Alan Smith:

check. Deep Work is first. Okay, that's probably

Nick Lincoln:

better. There we go. Excellent, right next.

Alan Smith:

I changed mine. I changed mine because I've just finished reading this, this book, and say, before we we share all these things. And I'd always wonder, how many people actually say, oh, because Carl said it, or Alan said, as I'm going to buy that and read that, I really recommend this book. I seriously recommend it. Certainly if you've got a business, I mean, it applies for everyone, but if you're growing a business, if you're growing a business and you've got a team, this is the book called The AI driven leader by Jeff woods. Is brilliant, right? Without going over all that old stuff, AI, artificial intelligence, what have you, because, I think, on a personal basis, but I got excited about it, sort of ran away. We got some, some quick wins earlier on. Then I've been thinking, well, Where's, where's all the other breakthroughs coming from now? And it kind of, that's, there's a natural cycle in a new technology. You sort of, it peaks everyone, everyone anticipates is going to continue like this forever. And then some of the things, you know, people are, I don't know, writing LinkedIn posts or creating funny images or something more wonderful. But that's not necessarily complete, you know, breakthroughs for companies. So actually, it was, I had it already. I got Spotify. You get free books and Spotify, it's brilliant. Certain of audio books, so I'm now listening more. I didn't I did. I used to all just read on Kindle. So I listened on Spotify to this shout out to

Unknown:

Martin chapel, there again, Alan, please. Sorry. It's called again.

Alan Smith:

It's called the AI. Is a link to it in the show notes, Mr. Widger, but it's called the, it's called the AI driven leader. Ai driven leader by Jeff woods, and he's got a whole check to he's got a website, which, I think again, link in the show is AI driven leader.com with a whole lot of stuff. There, you do a little questionnaire, and you can download a lot of stuff, and it's got a little like Crash Course, effectively, because this book is written for CEOs, founders, senior level people in companies all around the world who saying, Look, God, I need to get into this AI stuff. But I don't really know much about it. Don't know where to start. So it's, it literally tells you this is what you must do. Here's a project, here's a thing to do. Just type this stuff or speak into it and and you just begin to utilize the technology in a far better, more effective way than I've ever seen it done before. Strong recommendation for me. I was just about to say shout out to Martin chapel from dimensional, who mentioned it to me as well. He just read it says one of the best books he's ever read, so well, particularly for you, for everyone, but particularly for you. Carl, get your head around it. I recommend that you can listen to it.

Unknown:

I've already downloaded as you're speaking. Good man.

Andy Hart:

Following on from the AI theme, I think one of the smartest companies in this space, Google, Deep Mind, founded by Demis habibis, they've got a brilliant documentary on YouTube called the thinking game. Definitely, definitely watch it. Strong recommendation, and it travels around with the Deep Mind team for five years, pre covid, covid, post covid, and all the challenges that they're trying to, trying to do along the way, they're doing some awesome work. So do check that out. It's a London based company, so I've been following them for a few years. So yeah, the thinking game on YouTube.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, it's really good. It's really good. It's really interesting.

Nick Lincoln:

Great stuff, great stuff. I don't have a cultured corner for this episode, so we've got, oh, Nicholas. Well, you know, if you haven't got something to contribute on this, don't go I haven't, I haven't, I haven't finished any books. I haven't seen thing on television or podcasts that particularly grab with me, so I will hopefully have the next episode.

Alan Smith:

That's what that's worth saying. That's worth saying we're not just adding these just for the sake of adding them. If we are adding them, they're going to be pretty good on average. I just want to reiterate that. And by the way, we need more reviews please. Yeah, we

Nick Lincoln:

do need more reviews in fact. In fact, as you see us today at Fun month, live the advisor edge, come and talk to us, and we will question you. And if you haven't left a review, Andrew will give you a good slap. How about that for a deal? Okay, Episode 89 is sliding down the U bend of Father Time. Thank you, dear trappers, for your time. Please do leave a review, and also do. Likewise, I'm on YouTube, hit the subscribe bell button, whatever it is, you'll get notifications when the newest new episode slides out. In the meantime, it's thank you and adios from the trap pack, we'll see you on the other side. Take care of there, folks.

Unknown:

Adios, bye, bye. Get your ticket, holding

Nick Lincoln:

the ticket. Holding the ticket office. Mr. Lincoln, we got 28 tickets. Left, mate, right. We're down to 28 tickets. Go get goodbye done.

Alan Smith:

Have you stopped recording? Nick.

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Nick Lincoln

Host
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Alan Smith

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Andy Hart

Co-host
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Carl Widger

Co-host
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Ola Abdul

Guest

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