93 - MADISON McCALL: At The Vanguard of Full Fat Financial Planning

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 Madison McCall, Senior Multi-Asset Investment Product Specialist for Vanguard UK
• TRAPist question from Richard Polson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardpolson93/
• Culture Corner

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

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:07

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 yes,

Nick Lincoln: 0:41

indeed, dear trappers, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 93 of the real advisor podcast. T Beat Trap. My name is indeed lit Lincoln. And joining me, as ever in the digital studio of doom, are the three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the ultra heart. Carl della voci the boy switcher, hello. 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, read up on my very good friend, the right honorable Mr. Andrew Usain Hart,

Andy Hart: 1:17

thank you very much. Nicholas, Okay, this one is from Matt Spence entitled, invaluable insights, five stars as a career changer to financial advice, the knowledge, insights and expertise shared by each of the hosts has been invaluable. This podcast has certainly accelerated my own learning and hopefully helped avoid a few pitfalls along the way. I also had the pleasure to meet Nick at PFS future vision 2026 who prompted this for review? I look forward to meeting the rest at trap live. Keep up the good work. Thanks. Back to you, boss.

Nick Lincoln: 1:50

Great stuff. Great stuff. Thanks for those reviews. Do keep them coming in. We absolutely love them. So let's put a timestamp on episode 93 of the real advisor podcast. Just a quick update on trap live. It's coming near and near, and near, and may the 13th, we have about eight tickets left at most. We the scholarships have all gone. We had a massive response to that. Some really, really good stories coming to trap live, and we can't wait to see them in the flesh, and we'll maybe get them to identify themselves during the evening, because it's a big, great chance for these youngsters to to network and start building out their little their little circles of friends in this thing of ours. So good stuff. And in the show circled show notes. At the top of the show notes, there's a whole list of resources where we're meeting, you know, hotel deals and so forth. I won't talk long about that. Okay, let's go. Who's starting off? Storyteller, the markets me.

Alan Smith: 2:37

Quick one, the conflict in the Middle East has meant that we have hit correction territory in the UK, at least interesting, the FTSE down 10% off, 10% from a high Andrew, and it was that speak slowly, but it would

Nick Lincoln: 2:55

talk about the markets and speak slowly for Andy's benefit, because he's okay,

Alan Smith: 2:59

yeah, Andy, it's called a correction, which I always thought was a funny name, isn't it? Yeah, not bad. It's returned to its it's corrected itself, or something, a correction, but it hit a correction. I find it interesting. All this markets don't really understand it, because you think the FTSE would be a bit more resilient being it's full of oil companies and more sort of boring companies, whereas the s, p5, 100 with tech companies seems to have been not hit as much anyway. There is a conflict going on. Markets don't like uncertainty. Markets don't like conflict. Found a very useful subscriber. No. Carl's a big fan. Charlie bilelo, creative finance pushes out. She's got a weekly newsletter. Newsletter came out last week, and within it, one of the charts that he shared was how markets have performed. Use the s, p5, 100 as the benchmark, but how they performed during previous conflicts, going right back to, you know, the Cuba missile crisis and you name it. And as we can anticipate, markets always recover. Some recover faster than others, but if you look in one year, three years, certainly five years later, markets have always been very resilient. Sometimes, some of your more concerned clients just want a bit of a bit of a history lesson. Sometimes to say, Don't worry, zoom out,

Carl Widger: 4:16

everything will be fine. Yeah, I think look a great point Alan. I think what they're looking for is a bit of comfort. I'm Charlie Bello, so he comes out. Is it weekly? He comes Yeah, weekly, weekly YouTube videos, right? Yeah. And I have used his YouTube videos. He does them, some solo and some of Peter maluk. And I've used those videos to send to clients, because they're, they're very visual aids, and the recording on YouTube is really, really good, as opposed to sending a long PDF or something. Yeah, good point, yeah. So I would highly recommend that.

Nick Lincoln: 4:52

So the last time that I and maybe all of us, did a mass communication to our clients was during the Wuhan lab leak period, where we would send out eight. Emails. That's what it's officially called. Now we'd send out emails and maybe videos and looms just saying, Hey, listen, this is unpleasant, and everything else, blah, blah, blah, any of us yet send any communications out about this? This is correction territory that we're going into.

Andy Hart: 5:16

It's a good question. Nick, I've been close to pushing the button. I have actually written an article about it, and Warren shoot another advisor, who we know quite well, did a post on LinkedIn the other day saying that exact question, have other advisors pulled the trigger and sent the don't panic email about the latest crisis? I haven't done it yet, but I'm going to be publishing that essay in my normal April newsletter. So it just happens to be coming up soon, but I haven't no sent out a, you know, an in between message Carl or Alan, yeah.

Carl Widger: 5:51

Well, we've kind of decided on a on a minus number, that when it gets to this amount, when it gets to this minus, we will send it out, because otherwise you could be doing it like, things are very volatile on a daily basis. So you are seeing, you know, you could see a minus three and a half, and then a plus two and a half, and then it's like, Jesus, you know. And things move very, very quickly. So really, for us, it's minus 15% and then we will, we'll send that kind of something around, a little bit like what Alan is saying, a bit of education, a bit of comfort, a bit of Don't worry. This isn't different this time, it will pass. And I think all the rhetoric from the people who started the war and who are continuing the war is that this will be a quick war. So let's hope that is the case. And I think then we'll have, you know, a quick turnaround. So fingers crossed on that,

Andy Hart: 6:41

another minor point, but I've had basically the bulk of my annual planning meetings in the last six weeks. So I've had detailed conversations with clients about investments anyway. So had I not had that, I might have sent them a message.

Alan Smith: 6:56

Alan, yeah, maybe final point on this, what we try to do, and I would encourage others to think about, is this idea of doing mass communications to clients is outdated now. Bottom line we now know there's two key pieces of information that we should all know. One is how long the client has been a client of your firm. So some are 10 years. Some are one year, for example, and the other is when whether you liked it or not, if you completed a mumble jumble questionnaire, when onboarding that client, you'll understand their attitude to volatility effectively if you're able to segment those two things, if you had a client. Our view is that if you can identify clients that have been clients for, let's say three years or less. So they've been through fewer market cycles and market volatility, and they've identified themselves as, I can't sleep at night if there's a if a market's down 3% then identify those. They probably deserve a communication and outreach, maybe a phone call. Those have been clients. We've had clients for 20 years. In some cases, they've seen it all before. They're saying, like, don't bother me with this. This is nothing. And also, I've told you that I don't care about volatility. In fact, I quite like it. So we ought to be in with the days of AI and technology and data. You know, reviewing all the data you've got, doing slightly more personalized comms might be the way to go. Just a thought,

Carl Widger: 8:18

yeah, but a very valid one. I think, yeah, that your newer clients are the ones to focus in on, because they they haven't got your messages, you know, over a long period of time, whereas the people who are with you for years and years, as I said before, my clients, a lot of my older clients, call me hashtag. Stick to the plan so they know not to read, yeah,

Nick Lincoln: 8:38

the same old answer. I take on board Alan's point and your point Carl as well. But I think, I don't think a client's been yours 20 years is gonna be utterly, gonna be completely pissed off. He's got an email from you, he'll be saying the same old thing, straight to being or archive. You know what I mean. So as long, as long, as long as the people that need to get the message get the message, yeah, no, that's,

Alan Smith: 8:56

yeah, I think I'm just making the point, Nick, that some of them were not in this territory at all yet. But if you, if you hit bear market territory, a phone call, a good old fashioned phone call. For those ones you want to been a client for a year. They put money in at this sort of peak of the market. They are down 15, 16% or whatever, and they've identified, they've told you that you just don't enjoy volatility. They might deserve a better than just a standard blog, email type thing

Carl Widger: 9:22

or another solution. We're probably doing this one to death guys, right? But, but maybe just a slight difference on that. We'll get our CIO to send out the blanket email to everybody with the various facts and figures, but then our private client managers will send a personalized video, makes sense, 30 seconds, one minute, to the client and saying, Look, yeah, nice. Just want to make sure that you're okay. Everything is and we haven't done that yet because we haven't hit the minus 15. So if we do cross that barrier, we will do that.

Andy Hart: 9:49

Would you get yours? Would you get your CIO Nick at Lincoln to Lincoln to send out

Nick Lincoln: 9:54

an essay to the she works at school in the daytime, so, yeah.

Unknown: 10:00

Yeah, all right, she's

Nick Lincoln: 10:04

actually home now, crashing around the kitchen anyway. I've got a point about the gold pullback as well. Do you want me to lean into that now? Because it kind of comes into this thing rather than Yeah, go, yeah. Okay, yeah. So, so we know that in sort of mid 2024 and then all of last year, gold one, and there's tremendous, tremendous tear. I mean, it's just just incredible. But since the start of this unpleasantness in Iran and the Straits of Hormuz and all that stuff, the gold price, which is theoretically an absolute safe haven, in terms of high inflation, which is looking like we might get if the oil supply is constricted further, and of war gold, especially this safe haven, when it's come down 14% since the start of this conflict, which is a quite significant drop. It's a good article from The Wall Street Journal, which I put a link to in the so called show notes, and it was behind a paywall, but they you can share, like a couple of free articles so TRAPPIST, you can read that if you want to, but there's it's definitely not doing at the moment what it should do. And I'd always can. I'd always wager that if you took out the 2024 2025 superb performance. If you'd invest in gold in January 1980 till January 2024 so the 44 years, effectively you'd made an annualized loss in real terms, year on year now. So who would have held on to gold for 44 years before going into the goal year 2024 this is about it's it's such a strange investment, and it's been such a bad investment for such a long time that I don't know, and I think we all agree on this, more or less, you know, it's shiny and useless, as Andy's repeating Twitter thing comes up every six months or so. You know, it's inert, shining, useless. Doesn't generate any income. It just sits there. And yes, 2024 was amazing. 2025 was amazing. Now we're was amazing. Now we're, you know, serious, serious geopolitical things going on. I think inflation will come back into the system, and it's off 14% now, some of that might just be people taking their gains, right? Because there have been tremendous gains over the last year and a bit, but you, as I said, take those out. For the last 44 years, it has been terrible. I don't know any other investment that has lost money on an annualized basis year on year for 44 years in real terms. And it's real terms that matter, right? Nominal in a thing of ours is just illusory. It's real after inflation returns that we have to be seeking for our clients. So that's just another example of how the markets are reacting in this in this period.

Carl Widger: 12:17

Anything maybe now is the right time, just to maybe mention our active fund manager friends, who will obviously be doing great stuff for their clients, and these, well, this is

Nick Lincoln: 12:27

where, this is where they every time I've been, yeah, I've been in advisors. It's 2001 car, and during every market decline, active fund managers somehow managed to time their way out of it, and they just come out way. That's why, that's why you pay them a big box, Nicholas without without exception. This is when they earn their course, you know? Yeah, so we

Carl Widger: 12:46

are just creating lots more problems for ourselves, because since our last episode, we have all got various messages from active fund managers, and we debated whether we'd bring somebody on, but we also thought that that was probably very boring and just going over old ground. Yeah, and yeah,

Alan Smith: 13:05

I think the point we appreciate their interest, we do, but everyone's entitled to their own opinion. You can believe in what you want. We're just expressing our own opinion. What we've all lived through, what we've done, what we've used, but, you know, there's this, there's plenty of room for other opinions.

Carl Widger: 13:20

There's no way for more fast. And the best investment portfolio that you can offer your client is the one that your client will stick to over time, right?

Nick Lincoln: 14:00

With profit, smooth manage. Okay,

Andy Hart: 14:04

I'll try with guard rails. Okay, so this was mentioned to me by a friend and fellow financial advisor who you all know, but will remain nameless. He shared a story about raising money because he's trying to grow his firm and acquire other businesses. He did the usual spoke to his bank that he's been banking with for 30 years. Obviously, banking within 30 years meant nothing. They asked him a shed load of very annoying questions. Ended up with a very convoluted loan deal, very expensive, complex, moved on, went to another bank. Similar story, even worse, even more complex. Anyway, he went to allica Bank, which is a new bank on the on the scene, one of these sort of Neo banks, as they call them in the UK. And got another story about that. Basically, they offered him a superb deal, grown up lending, simple terms, very flexible loan with a with a with an overdraft facility to increase. Just just grown up lending. So if there are any financial advisors out there looking to borrow money, debt finance, then allica Bank is someone to look at. So that will be, hopefully very useful to a very small number of the listeners, but just interesting to know. Over to you, Alan, I think you've got a point on this.

Alan Smith: 15:24

Well, yeah, just just point, just following on from that. And that is interesting, because if. Look back, because there are still, we all speak to them. I speak to them, ambitious financial planning firms that are looking to scale through acquisition and, yeah, getting access. It's a strange one, isn't it, because you think it's the most lendable type of business that you know, the recurring revenue model is very predictable, very sort of safe and secure and all the rest of its clients, yeah, but it's always been a challenge. And I think we know in the past, there was a company called Virtus, Virtus capital Matt, who ran that, and they, they had a tie up, I think, with transact, and they were funding, they were providing, I think, I mean, don't quote me on it, but I think they've closed, or they're doing just different type of debt structuring right now, but it is if Alicia bank, and I think they are, you're right. Andy, there are new entrants. They're very aggressive. I saw them. I saw one of their top guys speak at an event I was at a couple of weeks ago. Very impressive how he was what he was talking about. And really, they are the kind of the entrepreneurs bank, if you're a business, SME and you really want it so and all as you can appreciate all kind of digital, high tech stuff and really sensible side. But I didn't know they were lending into the IFA market. So that's useful, but if you want doing, not sure, not sure, I think he's okay, but haven't heard from for a little while. But there is another, I mean, you're looking for it's like London busses, none of there. And then two come along at once, because you've got Alicia and one of Matt's from Virtus, ex colleagues, this guy called Bradley Douglas. And Bradley has gone away and set up a new lender specifically for ifas. It's called Black Ridge. Black Ridge, Black Ridge advisory. I'll put a link to their website in the show notes, but it's exactly what they do. They've they've got access to capital, to funding. They'll help you get all your KPIs, or they'll basically help you put all your data, all your facts, get everything together such that a lender will be happy to provide funding for you in whatever kind of structure you want. So it's brand new startup, but he's got a lot of experience from his previous work with Virtus and with other other companies. So if you are one of those people who's looking for funding, you've now got two options. So all the details are in the show notes, so crack on.

Nick Lincoln: 17:55

Super duper. Okay, watch decent.

Carl Widger: 17:58

Yeah. Is this the Michael Kitz one?

Nick Lincoln: 18:04

It is executing with technology and AI, yeah.

Carl Widger: 18:07

So this is the Michael Kitz one. So Michael kids has interviewed a guy called Adam Dell of domain money. So we've all been talking about AI, the implications for AI, how we going to bring AI into our business, how, you know, what's that? What's our tech stack? What's What does the Holy Grail of the tech stack for a financial advisory business look like? This guy, Adam Dell, has done it. He started his business. He's a serial entrepreneur. He worked for Goldman Sachs. He was head of Marcus bank in Goldman Sachs for a while, and he's gone and started this business. They started dealing with clients in 2024 they're 1400 clients, and their turnover is 10 million. They do everything tech wise that you would imagine a new startup would do. Their advisors are all CFPs. They don't have to prospect for clients, because they do all the prospecting via their tech and via social media and that kind of stuff, if I was to so. So I suppose a lot of us are trying to figure out how to integrate tech into our businesses. Now, this guy has done it in reverse. He's just started a business, and he's going, this is how I'm going to do it. He's built all the tech stack himself. So he's obviously has a team of tech people behind his business. And if I was to start a financial planning business, because everybody gets a financial plan in his business, this is what I would do. I think everybody in our business, whether you're a mature business, a very mature business like Alan's, are starting out. Are somewhere in the middle. I think everybody needs to listen to this episode, and then you need to go and do a bit of Googling, which I did do on this guy. It's phenomenal. It is the future. And if you don't know what him and his like are doing well, then you will be left behind for sure.

Alan Smith: 20:16

Wow, wow. That's really interesting. Carl, because that I haven't heard that podcast. I would definitely be listening to that, because that really resonates with some of the stuff I've been reading recently. I've done a couple of linked. In posts about this as well, because this seems to be the evolving model. There's a lot of the big VC companies, not private equity specifically VC. VC are generally, you know, very early stage businesses, usually technology companies that a lot of them are involved in. So I'm thinking about Sequoia Capital, general catalyst. There's a bunch of them that are really understanding this. And so very interesting articles, as partners from these organizations have put out in the last month or so, which is to say that historically, what we've been talking about, what I've been talking about, all of us been talking about this podcast, is more like an AI powered advisor, like I've got, I'm an advisor, and I'm going to get an AI tool to do my meeting notes, for example, and some other stuff. I'm still but it's basically, I mean, I did a post last week, I think, which was along the lines of, everyone's trying to build a better blockbuster, when what everyone wants, what your customers want, is a Netflix, in other words, an always on platform that understands you use an algorithm to send like we're talking about the beginning of this episode. If you know your clients and all the past data is there, you're sending a highly personalized message. You're not going to do a generic email because the markets are down 10% you'll know exactly, and you will also know because they've been checking their portfolio every day, right? These clients are specifically because all integrated. So the new model is exactly that. That's why this episode be very interesting. You're building an end to end operating model from scratch with with a human element, human layer on top of it. But it's the end to end system that is what's required. And there's a lot this is apply. So I'll just finish off. This is applying to all professional services, legal, tax management, consultant, accounting, the whole thing, because there's far more money, if you look at the global revenue from professional services versus SaaS, like technology companies, professional services far, far, far bigger. So this is the, seems to be the platform model of the future. And I'm aware, can't say too much of a couple of things going on in the UK along these similar lines right now, because I think that's the direction of travel that will all not be heading in.

Carl Widger: 22:37

Yeah, he said two. He said two very interesting things. One was that it's, it's in our in the business models that we all have, it's very difficult to hire your financial advisor who goes out and brings in the clients, right? That those people are difficult to find and to successfully bring into your business, because there's a ton of CFPs who just want to do deliver financial plans. So he said it's much, much easier for him to hire and to bring people in. And then a huge part of the growth of his business is him hooking up with other financial advisory firms who bring who have referrals from other clients that are below their minimums, and he's bringing them in, giving them a financial plan, and then when they get over the Aom requirements, he'll send them back to the client. And in the meantime, there's a revenue share. Now, the revenue share isn't that big. It's 15% I think, to the advisor who still gives, gives him. But I just thought, What a brilliant business model, you know, because, because he's so tech slick, his costs are much, much lower. So he doesn't need that three grand a year that's required, or whatever is people have decided they require from clients. He can do it for much less of a cost, and he can almost sweat that asset by delivering really great financial planning. And he's very, very big, like you'll all love this, because he's very big on how great his financial plans are. But we've been talking about, how do we bring in our CRM system, voyant, etc, etc. He's just built it all himself from the ground up, and he feels that his financial plans are of course, he's going to say this, but obviously he's done a lot of work on it. His financial plans are super slick and better than anything else that's out there in the market. It's very interesting, very impressive.

Andy Hart: 24:27

My question car was around the marketing, is he getting AI to do a lot of the marketing and massive wide spread across social media.

Carl Widger: 24:33

And yeah, well, he's doing a lot of he says he's getting a lot from referral business. So one client after another after another, he's focusing very much on kind of the Henry's, as we'd call them, high earners, not rich yet. He's doing a lot of partnerships with accountancy firms, with legals, blah, blah, blah, and then his he sees the biggest opportunity is the financial advisors referring business that they don't want to do on the basis that they get, number one, a revenue share, and then they'll get the client back if the client, you know, goes over a certain amount down the line.

Andy Hart: 25:12

That is very unusual, to get the client back once they've hit a certain number. That was enticing. Yeah, I thought that was mad. But I mean, the client might not want to go then, and the advisor might not want them back. Well, I think

Alan Smith: 25:24

that's the reality. The client's experience is super slick Tech experience. And you

Andy Hart: 25:29

want to go back to this. Dinosaur,

Alan Smith: 25:32

by the way, who turned you down three years ago.

Carl Widger: 25:34

No, no, he's fixed that also, because his system will be white labeled under the advisor.

Alan Smith: 25:40

Okay, even better, there you go. Don't go, that's good. This is where things are going. There's no question. Yeah, well, listen,

Nick Lincoln: 25:48

that's, that sounds very that's, let's give that a damn good listening to it. So I've just added that.

Carl Widger: 25:52

Yeah, added that. So I was going to put it in the what the thing at the end? But I said, No, Disney's the conversation.

Nick Lincoln: 26:05

Okay, let's be Crikey. We're like 25 minutes. Shoot me. Okay. What do you want to now? Nothing. Like octopus. You first No, no on a screen. Mate. When I'm bits of paper get with the beat.

Alan Smith: 26:18

I'm on the screen as well. But this is the two this this topic, and the one that you were mentioning, which is the article in the paper from

Andy Hart: 26:27

I love he talks about this deep AI, and he can't even work at Google. I'm looking

Alan Smith: 26:31

at it on my screen now. Anyway, so this Nick, this is about private company valuations and your article. Your thing was similar the, okay, I'll put

Nick Lincoln: 26:41

it back there, then if you want me to go and start with yours, but I'll just start.

Alan Smith: 26:44

No, it was just an article, and I'm just going to point people to I'm not going to say too much about it, but the Financial Times has got a section called Alphaville, and a lot of people don't want to pay the money to subscribe to ft. But Alphaville is free if you register. And they're really good, they're really kind of, I call it irreverent, kind of, it's a bit sort of trap, like, in its way, it's kind of, you know, it looks at particular subjects, and in almost, not quite a jokey way, but a sort of a very readable method that they have for writing their articles. Anyway, they wrote one was a bit of an investigation, not investigation. They did a sort of journalistic review into octopus and one of their products, which is called fern. All right, so this is all quoted, and they're just questioning how octopus have arrived at some of the valuations, because this is back to this point that we often have talked about, which is private company valuations. How are you arriving at it? Because this this product called firm, which I know little or nothing about, so I make that clear from the beginning, but it's got a valuation which is decided by the board of the company, which is a huge premium on the actual net asset value. And all the other similar companies in their sector have got a big discount to the net asset value because they're invested in a bunch of things, and energy and solar companies and what have you. So the Yeah, all I would say is, because this is a product which ifas use, right? And I we've never used it, but if it's a product, ifas used, there's a deep dive. Yes, yes, yeah, multi billion pound product. And of course, it's used for, would you call it the Yeah, inheritance tax planning? A lot of people like it for inheritance tax planning, if you've got somebody put your money into it, and as long as you don't die within two years, then it's exempt from your estate from IHT planning. But I just thought I'd bring it to the attention of any Trappists that might have been using these BPR products, particularly the octopus one. It's just worth the read. You know, do your own research, as they say, come to your own conclusions. Speak to octopus about it, if you'd like to. But it's, it's definitely worth a read.

Andy Hart: 29:31

I think Alan, anyone who's an advisor that's got clients invested in that knows a lot about this situation. They don't need to be prompted about this. All right? You know, it's circulating a lot within the advisor community, because I believe the valuations are down, the fees are excessive. You know, there's not much good news around this product.

Nick Lincoln: 29:50

Nick No, no. Nor in the States, Jason schweig of The Wall Street Journal has written about a lot how these, a lot, how these, a lot of these private equity funds are sort of self, self valuing themselves. Yeah, they do like that. And then combine with horrendous like, 345, percent annual charges and stuff, it's just like, okay, really, where are the clients boats? Where are the clients yachts? Writ large? And my piece is of a similar vein, and we've been banging on about this, but I've been on Twitter. I see some active ifas on Twitter who are also pushing against this and saying, This is going to be an absolute car crash. Is the UK government's continuing desire to tell large sways of the DC pension regime in this country where to invest their assets, and specifically to almost no they are coercing them so to invest into private equity, private equity unlisted, illiquid, very murky. And there was an article in The Telegraph link to it, the so called show notes. And I've stripped away the thing so you can read it by Tom McPhail, who I referenced a few episodes ago on here. But his he thought tax free cash was going to go, didn't he, so he took his tax free cash for his pension. So I gave him a kick in for that. But here Tom McPhail, who's generally been quite he's, you know, 20 years at Hargreaves lands. Hargreaves Lansdowne. He was their pensions guy. He was the go to guy, massive in the media in this country, Carl, and then he's done some other stuff. And he worked for the landcat consultancy. Not sure if he still works there or not, but generally, he puts out stuff that's wild, technically, very competent. Obviously, he's never been that put. Political or that angry or anything, when he put this story in The Telegraph and he doesn't hold back, I'm going to quote a couple of basin bits here. Of course, it doesn't stop with Mr. Bell. It could be Ed Miliband getting his hands on our pensions to help fund his madcat renewable energy or carbon capture projects. Worse still, because the draft legislation confers the power to mandate on the government until 2035 it is possible we could one day see Prime Minister Polanski taking control of our retirement savings. And remember, this is not a government acts in good faith. It promised not to raise national insurance and then did so using weasel words to justify its actions, even though we all knew they had broken their word to the British people. This is freedom, socialist style, the freedom to invest where you want, as long as we're as long as it's where we tell you there's a reason. Hayek described it as the Road to Serfdom. It ends with the commiseration of the population. Our retirement savings sacrificed to Torsten bells. Cubs. Torsten Bell is the pensions minister for labor, one of these Fabian people who are in it for the long term. So you're well worth reading. And I think, well, if people read it now, Nick, there's three paragraphs. Andy, I can read three paragraphs. Andy, I can read three paragraphs. So this looks it's not for you. That's if people like Tom mcfail are losing their rag because they these people did never go out on a limb like this. They never do, yeah, and I think it's just in debt. This is symptomatic of a general just feeling of anger with how our pensions are being dicked around, with just this lack of how things are chopping and changing all the time. And these people really do think that our pots are our pots of money are theirs for their use, and it's not going to mean well. So there we go. More private equity madness from the UK Government, where this will spread to

Carl Widger: 32:50

if you want to know that it's if you want proof that it's total madness. There are eight massive pension funds in Canada. They're called the maple eight. Don't know if you've heard them before. Hundreds of billions in these funds. The Ontario pension teachers pension fund has itself decided to value the private equity portion of that fund because they couldn't believe what they were getting from the fund managers. So although the fund last although for the Ontario, Ontario teachers pension fund, last year, grew by something like 4.5% they lost $10 billion in their private equity portfolio and all of the other of the maple aid funds have all suffered significant losses in their private equity portfolios as well. Jesus Christ, I was going to put that in as a topical tidbit, but I didn't really know where it would fit in. But now that you've mentioned it, there you go. No, that's perfect.

Nick Lincoln: 33:56

That's perfect. And TRAPPIST, if we beat one about specifically, I'd be talking about this, because I really do think this is going to be an absolute car crash, and I want it on the record before the event that we all thought so, because this is massive, this ghost hits up. It could really affect the pension landscape in this country. Okay, hands down, as far as I can see. So we're on to ultra

Andy Hart: 34:17

okay, this is the news that Revolut revolute the awesome banking app that I have an account with, seeing what they're up to. It's very slick and amazing. They've got their UK banking license after five years of probably pulling teeth to the regulator. This is so this now means that they can offer more traditional banking products, I'm thinking like mortgages, credit cards, loans and various other banking products. That's it. Really. I don't know if they're going to do crazy innovative products, but they probably likely will do they're one of Europe's highest valued private company.

Carl Widger: 34:53

They're amazing. Everybody in Ireland has a revolute account, and mostly we use it to give our kids money, because you can have revolute Junior accounts, which is also amazing, because it teaches your kids how to use a bank account and all that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. And then they learn how to request money from dad, and then you have to, like, is that good? Yeah, but, but look, if it's teaching your kids about money, then it's a good it is a good thing. But there are there, like, you know, you can invest via my revolute app. You can buy cryptocurrency, you can do any long term savings. You can So, it is super, super cool. It's going, they've transformed, I would say, what's happening in the UK market?

Andy Hart: 35:33

Yeah, I don't know if it's same in Ireland, but they've got like, a, like a membership thing, an ultra pack thing, that you get discounts are loads of other stuff. Smithy might know the details a bit better than me, but I think they raised money on crowd cube. Some, many, many their crowd Yes, crowdfund. Think if you, if you 1000 pounds, it'd be worth 1.2 5 million now or something,

Alan Smith: 35:54

they're the most successful like crowd fund, ever,

Unknown: 35:58

yeah, yeah.

Alan Smith: 36:01

He's moved to Dubai.

Andy Hart: 36:03

You're just mentioning it again, because obviously Nicholas did a crowd cube once. Didn't nick the curse. Situation Anyway, moving on from that, at least he didn't do my one experience,

Nick Lincoln: 36:14

my one experience anyway, that was a pay. The infomercial for Revolut and we're looking for sponsors, so please,

Alan Smith: 36:20

yeah, we'll take

Carl Widger: 36:22

it is our duty to call out great innovation and revolution. No, they are brilliant.

Nick Lincoln: 36:30

Okay, now this next could be, this could be a woke thing. I can't believe it's the transition. I'm sometimes think of storyteller coaching for advisors in transition. I just, I

Alan Smith: 36:42

see where you coming from. No, no, no, please, just don't, just don't go there. No, no, there's. I met a guy a couple of weeks ago, and I thought he was really good. It's called Jeremy Klein. Yeah, he's an ex lawyer. He was lawyer in the sort of big private client, but, you know, ultra high net worth space, and he he is now, he's a coach, and he delivers coaching and and the majority of his clients are financial advisors, wealth managers, financial planners, that sort of thing. And he was just telling me that, particularly those going through a transition like thinking of setting up their own business, like thinking of changing jobs thinking, or just sort of, you know, people go through I've had coaching myself in the past. I've really benefited from it. I enjoyed it. And I said to him, I give him a quick shout out, so I'll put a link to his website. He's got a podcast as well. Link to his website in the show notes, if someone says thinks they might benefit from a bit of personal one to one coaching, particularly as they're, you know, dealing with maybe some some business changes. That's disappointing, though, then they should do that. Jesus Christ. Oh my god, absolute shambles.

Carl Widger: 37:52

I have a proposition here. Could could Alan and Andy and myself club in and could we send Nick

Alan Smith: 38:01

a bit of transition coaching,

Carl Widger: 38:03

and then the coach will need a coach.

Nick Lincoln: 38:07

I saw, I saw a psychologist, once a psychiatrist. She resigned, she sat, she sat herself and never, never took my phone calls again. One meeting anyway. Are we done on this one? No.

Andy Hart: 38:16

Smithy, did this guy say what typical clients he works with in the IFA space? Is it mainly advisors that have sold their business and they're struggling with their current

Alan Smith: 38:26

No, no, that's a whole different type of coaching. Now, these are, this is ones who often, a lot of people are just sort of going along every day, is pretty much like the other right? So they don't really need coaching, but some are thinking of setting up on their own. Is one thing that I'm thinking of doing this, or I'm thinking of really going for it, like, maybe I'm going to, like, we've spoken about a moment ago, I'm going to borrow money, I'm going to acquire a few firms, and I just want to have somebody. So I get the business stuff, I get the numbers, I get all that. But on a personal basis, am I up for it? Is my family situation solid for it? You know, can I I'd love to, love to speak to somebody who gets me, understands me, and is not necessarily tied up with the transactions, the business strategy, what's going on? Someone's got a bit of experience and has dealt with lots of other successful kind of entrepreneurs and business owners, that sort of thing. If in doubt, I'd say, just reach out to him. That as I say, the links in the show notes, reach out to him. Have a 15 minute call with Jeremy. I've had a chat with him. Good guy. Good guy, for sure, just a goal.

Carl Widger: 39:32

On this one, you said something important. There a lot of people know. You know, a lot of people are. You know, one day is just like the next, just like the next. I think if that's you and you're in your comfort zone, you should go and talk to the coach. Get yourself out of your comfort zone. There's loads more left in. You go, unfortunately, your potential. You're informed today. Calm.

Nick Lincoln: 39:55

Thank you. 38 minutes program. Carl, your point?

Carl Widger: 40:05

I smoke too soon. Or is this about the Ireland thinking strategically? Yes, I don't have the notes in front of me, but I kind of have obviously. So yeah, but that's every episode. That's not just this episode, evidently. So yeah, but you used to call it out to me. So why have you changed? Because Ultra

Nick Lincoln: 40:25

once said, Don't read out the whole bloody title of the thing. We know what was coming up next. So I don't, well,

Carl Widger: 40:30

can I please request, like, read you? Read mine. Mine out and tee me up. Thank you.

Nick Lincoln: 40:36

Okay, your next Carl and yours is, is Ireland thinking strategically? Yeah.

Carl Widger: 40:42

Thank you, Nick, yes. We are waiting with bated breath for all the tax changes around investing in Ireland, and our Taoiseach Prime Minister has come out. She said that the inheritance tax rules are being reviewed, so we are going to have much better inheritance tax scenarios going forward. Maybe I'm being naive, but is it that our politicians are actually thinking strategically at. Long Term and trying to create an environment where we can create this wealth for ourselves and then not pay too much tax in the long term. I'm very excited about all this, and I actually do believe that the we are, we have a fairly stable environment here, politically and economically, and we are actually using this time to plan for the future. I think it's absolutely brilliant.

Alan Smith: 41:42

Carl, can I just ask, I don't know anything about Irish politics. Where would you say the Irish government is on the kind of political spectrum? Are they center left? Are they work?

Carl Widger: 41:52

What's so I'm I'm the least political person in the whole world, as you know, I would say center right. So they're fairly secure in themselves. There's kind of a coalition of two parties, and to have it kind of wrapped up that some of the other parties were making strong surges to will they be in power, and they've kind of made bags of themselves a little bit, which is why our guys are our center, right? Guys are feeling we're going to get loads of messages going center. Are you joking me, right? So just leave out the politics right for a second. We have the old the it's like the old guard are in there, and they're like a safe pair of hands. But I think they've they deserve credit for what they're doing at the moment.

Andy Hart: 42:34

Yeah, sounds like that question pretty quickly. Carl, so yeah, okay, yeah,

Alan Smith: 42:39

moving on. Talk about politics. Gets us in trouble.

Nick Lincoln: 42:42

Politics, 41 minutes. 41 minutes please, right? I was

Alan Smith: 42:48

three, bringing another, another, another resource to financial planners. There is, I mean, to be fair, there's a lot of resource out there. But I had a message the other day from our good friend, good friend of trap, Cathy Harrison, whose team runs these boot camps. So The Verve Foundation, The Verve Foundation, are putting on not one, not two, but three new boot camps for financial advisors. So this is designed again for those who are thinking of going out on their own, thinking of setting up, starting their own businesses, aren't quite sure where to start, and they're in different locations this time. So not just in London, but also in Edinburgh. For my compatriots, the Scottish advisors and global center of finance, Darlington, so in London, Edinburgh and Darlington,

Andy Hart: 43:40

that's, that's the head office, Darlington smithy, obviously, you know that? Yeah, yeah.

Alan Smith: 43:44

Obviously, obviously, northeast. So if you're a northeast or you just can't be asked to come to London or Edinburgh, then Darlington would be a convenient location for you, but three new boot camps. And from what I've seen for I've seen on their website, there's a lot of really good resource. So I think what we're saying is, and again, sort of alluding to Carl's message earlier on every day, say, is the same old stuff between, you know, the Jeremy the coach, and Kathy Harrison, and just, there's a lot of resource out there, right for people. So you've just got it. There's no excuse. Now, if you really have been sort of thinking about this for a while. Reach out, speak to these people, get on a call, go to these boot camps. Do something.

Andy Hart: 44:24

Do boot camps, not book camps.

Alan Smith: 44:26

Now that's what you went on. Come on Nick move it along. Please go

Carl Widger: 44:36

next point. Silver crest. Silver crest. Asset Management from United States of America are coming to Ireland. They've applied for their central bank license. I never heard of them before, but these guys have $37 billion assets under management. They've an exceptionally cool website. It's all about financial planning for high net worth clients, family offices, that kind of stuff. I'm hoping they come to Ireland and they shake up this market and that the incumbents have a bit of competition, and we might all rising, rising tides lift all boats. Yeah, it's, it's it. I, I'm excited to see if they actually come here. Are they just coming here to get their license the euro to Europe, but it will be cool to see somebody like they'd immediately be the second biggest in Ireland in terms of wealth management. So Wow. Yeah, it would be great to see some new blood into the market. I think it helps everybody and everyone well, send their pencils and on the back

Nick Lincoln: 45:40

of Kathy Harrison's boot, boot camps, or book camps, whatever supposed to call them. And that story there, Carl, that's brilliant, brilliant new blood coming to this thing of ours. We can close off the topic. Tidbits represent 93 with a really good example of new blood coming to this thing of ours. Can't We?

Alan Smith: 45:53

Story teller? We can indeed. And this is a great way to round off the top of tip bits this week. So regular listeners will have heard us mention a gentleman by the name of Matt Spivey, of the last few episodes going back a couple of months. So Matt initially was tuning in to the podcast. Was in a different career entirely. Started listening to Travis. Fancied his chances of becoming a financial planner, so under his own esteem, got qualified. And the thing that Matt did, and we spoke about this before, but I think we all thought was brilliant, was he created his own website. He created a short form video of himself. He basically, he posted his business plan, how he was going to go out and prospect and win clients and the niche that he was going to work in, and it was great. So we all agreed that is the way to go. If you're trying to get into an entirely new industry that you don't know anyone in, this is the way to go about it. So stand out and put some effort into it. Put a bit of effort in. Don't just send a one line email saying, I'm thinking of changing jobs. Can you come and can I come and work for you? No, he didn't. He put the effort in. So we, I spoke about it. We all talked about it in the past, we posted a link to his website in the previous episode, he had a few conversations with a few advisors, and I'm pleased to report that he secured a job as a financial planner at a full fat financial planning company. You Yeah, absolutely brilliant. So Matt will be working at Bell main IFA, which is a Yorkshire based IFA firm. I know Alex there. They really do it. They're doing everything that we would support, everything that we would endorse as a trap related company, full fat financial planning. Matt has found himself from being an entirely different career into working as a financial planner in that firm. So yeah, absolutely that we, we just love these sort of stories and where we can, we can help. We will continue to do so,

Nick Lincoln: 47:51

absolutely superb. So, superb. Okay, 47 minutes in Episode 93 of the real advisor podcast. It's time to move on to the meat and potatoes of episode 93 this is where we take one subject, and we kind of go a bit deeper into things. And sometimes it's the four of us. Jabron is rabbiting on active fund management in the last episode. Now more frequently, we're getting guests on. And we have a guest this week who was interviewed by watch. So without any further perambulation, watch. Just give us a quick intro to who this guest is and what we're doing.

Carl Widger: 48:23

We've got Madison McCall from Vanguard. She's a very big deal at Vanguard, but she's way too modest to say that in the interview or at any other time. I think you'll enjoy this one. You Madison McCall, so delighted to have you on this week's meat and potatoes. So I have your job title here, senior multi asset product specialist, responsible for multi asset range, including the flagship life strategies range at Vanguard. So obviously, we're delighted to be in partnership with Vanguard, and delighted that that you're on today. So of all the people in Vanguard, they've decided you're the one that has to go and take on the trap, guys. So my apologies, I'm sure it's hardly a bucket list item.

Madison McCall: 49:18

No, I'm honored. I'm honored that I was selected to be on the chat podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Carl, um, I'm happy maybe to kick it off with a bit on my background and Yeah, lovely, yeah. Um, so I've been with Vanguard now for nearly nine years, which has absolutely, kind of flown by. I've been, you know, in a number of different capacities. I started with our US business, our kind of headquarters in Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, and it's flown by. But the last three years I've spent with our European business in London, so several years here, kind of supporting on this side of the pond, the growing European business for Vanguard, I like to say I traded the suburban charm of Pennsylvania for the wonderful city life of London in that transition. You mentioned my current role. I'm the senior multi asset specialist at Vanguard. So I cover, as you mentioned, the flagship life strategy range, but also our full multi asset lineup. So we have different pockets of flavors within multi asset, and I cover that for our European business. What that means, really day to day is you can think of me supporting different teams across the European business. So think distribution, research and implementation, the editorial team, I support those different teams making sure that our multi asset range, it's really healthy. It's doing what it says it does on the tin that's essential, and of course, that it's really understood by our clients that that's key for us too. So that's kind of a bit of of my background in terms of education. I studied International Business Finance, and along the way, I got a CFA charter holder designation as well,

Carl Widger: 51:09

very good. So you've achieved an awful lot in nine short years of a career. So bring me back to and. Where does, where does a person like Maddie decide that, yeah, do you know what I'm going to go into the asset management space? Or was it this kind of evolved, or bring me back to your childhood and that kind of stuff, where did this dream come from?

Madison McCall: 51:31

Yes, I mean the starting point. And I think we have kind of a shared fun fact. My fun fact is, I am a triplet, and I learned that your fun fact is you're the father of triplets. So I love that connection, which is a bit

Carl Widger: 51:43

mental, really, so nearly both you and I know more than most people about the living in chaos and the needing resilience to just dive on through resilience.

Madison McCall: 51:56

That's a good one. Yeah, you know. So, I mean, going back to that, we all had different skill sets, right? And for me, business and finance in particular was always something interesting. I just kind of gravitated it to, to that field a bit more than than my sisters and you know, as I was reviewing and exploring the different opportunities in the investment industry. At the time, a lot of firms to me were sounding very similar, but when I came across Vanguard, it actually felt very different to me, and it was specifically for me, this idea that investing should be accessible for absolutely everyone that really resonated with me, because growing up, my parents didn't invest it wasn't something they felt was accessible or really even meant for them. I would say so when I heard about how seriously Vanguard takes its mission, its unique ownership structure, that for me, all really clicked. And it wasn't about the product. It wasn't about, you know, margin, it was just helping kind of normal people to get ahead, people, just like my parents. And for me, that resonated. So I loved that aspect.

Carl Widger: 53:11

So just just like there was no necessarily kind of business focus in your family at all. So are you the first to get into the business world?

Madison McCall: 53:22

Yes, oh yeah. So first to be Yeah, and finance. My dad is a sports writer for our local paper. I'm just retired, actually, about a year or so ago. And how's he enjoying that? He's enjoying it a lot. He has a lot of new responsibilities now, helping the neighbors, picking up their kids from school, yeah, but he's loving it.

Carl Widger: 53:42

So he has a purpose. That's what we like to hear. Yeah, he

Madison McCall: 53:45

has a purpose. Excellent. And my mom is in news casting. She at the local news station does she's the anchor woman, so she does the local news every night. So definitely a bit of a leap to go into finance, and

Carl Widger: 54:00

it was there, ensconced in the local community, whereas you're gone international. So there's Maddie over in London doing her thing.

Madison McCall: 54:08

I know it's still, it's still, sometimes it's hard to believe that.

Carl Widger: 54:11

I know your sisters still in the States. Are they? Are they around the world? Yep, they are.

Madison McCall: 54:17

They are. One is in Pennsylvania and one is in North Carolina, in medicine and kind of social work. So very different fields.

Carl Widger: 54:25

Yeah, I love it. I love it. A lot of different perspectives there, exactly.

Madison McCall: 54:29

I mean, so yeah, Vanguard really drew me in, kind of with that philosophy, a different type of financial company, right? The other thing I'd be remiss not to mention, though, is is this idea of the Vanguard effect. So this idea that Vanguard comes into a marketplace, we add, you know, transparency, we drive some competition, and we keep costs lower for all investors in the space, not just Vanguard clients. That was another thing for me that really made me pause and think, wow, I can really see myself, kind of being part of this organization. So now, I suppose, flash forward those nine years that I've been here with Vanguard, and I've helped my parents to open their very first investment accounts, or it's Vanguard accounts. So they're investors now they're investing kind of for their retirement, or, in my dad's instance, you know, he's in retirement now he has that cushion to help him a bit, and that's for me, that's what really hits. You know, I sensed that from the outside when I chose to join Vanguard, but being on the inside now, I can see it even more clearly

Carl Widger: 55:37

I come here, obviously, there's a there's a bit of uncertainty in the geopolitical world at the moment, right to put it mildly. And I know that I even looked at some of the advisor materials that Vanguard put out over the last couple of weeks to help, you know, kind of reassure clients that, look, this will pass too. But you have the professional perspective, because obviously you're, you're in the role that you're doing, you're clearly a big deal, although I I'm getting the sense you're way too modest to say that. But then you have the personal, the human perspective, so from your folks point of view. So do you see, do you like, Have you got calls from your folks? You know, Maddie, what's, what's. Going on here? Should we do anything? Or, you know, from a on a human level, you've probably seen that too,

Madison McCall: 56:22

definitely, absolutely, it's probably the number one question. I think, a client and and then, of course, the advisors on the back of that kind of have, and Vanguard has a lot of tools and different research at at the disposal of advisors to try to help with some of those tough conversations. You know, zooming out. You know, at Vanguard, we really believe in the value of advice. It's really powerful. It can play a really important role in people's lives, their long term financial outcomes. And we want to make sure that advisors feel really supported. And to zoom out again, even more. You know that commitment, it comes from real experience. So in our US business, we've built a personal advisor services business, and that now supports$400 billion in client assets. So it's given us this deep insight into how advice actually works in practice. So not just, you know, advice in theory. And as we bring that back to the UK, one of the biggest things we've done in the last 18 months, it's to create what we call the advisor Research Center. So not sure if you came across that when you were kind of looking through different materials, but it's dedicated team focus entirely on the advisor. We want to know and understand. What do they need the challenges they face, whether it's those geopolitical things or otherwise, and that team's role is to bring these fresh perspectives to support that decision making and really to champion the value of the advisor. So a lot of the thought leadership, the geopolitical and otherwise, it comes directly from this team's work, and we've invested a lot into areas like quantifying and advisors alpha and developing different behavioral coaching tools that they can use so in terms of just where to find this, and it's freely available, right to advisors, not just Vanguard advisors, it lives online. You can find it on Vanguard 365, and that's a free digital platform. Again, for advisors, we have that research, we have tools, we have really relevant insights, and we add new stuff there all the time. We actually just published a really interesting kind of first advice survey of its kind, there for vanguard in the UK, where we've gathered insights from over 1000 different advised investors and 200 financial advisors. So all of that data and kind of culminated into a report where we look at, what are the preferences of clients, what are the perceptions on the value of advice that paper is available on there.

Carl Widger: 59:07

And look, Maddie, I've read that paper. And actually, we sat with Vanguard before Christmas, and we did a couple of interviews on this right? That's the client connect paper, right? Exactly. Every advisor really does need to read this, because there is a disconnect between what the advisors think the clients want and actually what the clients want. And you can, you know, shout from the rooftops as to what you think, but, but really, if you're not forging this connection, that that you're meeting the clients where they're at, if you're forging this connection, we're always talking about that, you know, we will bring them on a journey, but first of all, we need to meet them where they're at. And I would say the advisor Alpha report that's kind of ongoing for many, many years now, at this stage like that, is absolutely brilliant as well. So at its at a bare minimum, every advisor needs to read these two reports, and they're actually set out really cool, cool in that there's, there's stats, and there's, you know, there's, there's little tidbits that you can take out of it. So I would definitely encourage everybody to go there. In Ireland, we've recently, Standard Life, hosted Vanguard and Seb and Roy did a kind of road show around the country, and like, we're very excited in Ireland that that that we're probably getting a little bit Love, Love from Vanguard now, because there's an investment frenzy about to happen, as I've described it, right, in terms of the some of the rules around tax changes and that kind of stuff. So it's magnificent for us here as well, to get the support from Vanguard. And I know I met the, I met the guys over the last week or two, and they're very, very engaged in terms of wanting to support and, you know, providing that everything you've spoken about in terms of value, in terms of the culture of Vanguard, you know, and bringing that to the Irish market. So it's absolutely brilliant. Can I just, can I just go back to kind of one of your remits is to look after the flagship life strategies now they're certainly amongst the trap crew. There was a little bit of confusion as to what changes. Have been made, or what changes haven't been made, and what's likely to come. So you're you're the person looking after it, so you're the best person for me to ask. Tell us about where is life strategies at now? What changes have you made, and what do you see coming in terms of innovation?

Madison McCall: 1:01:31

Yes, yeah, couple things there. So you know, in terms of what's changed with the product. We announced in January of this year, a couple changes to the product. One fee cuts across the life strategy range, so we moved from 22 bits down to 20 fantastic news for our advisors and, of course, investors. That's a great change. We also announced a change to the UK tilt level within our life strategy range. So we've had a tilt, you know, since the beginning, towards the UK, and we've scaled that back a bit, still a substantial overweight, right? So where we land now is 20% overweight in UK equities and UK bonds. We scaled that back, but we maintain that overweight in that flagship range. The third announcement was the introduction of a brand new life strategy range called Life strategy global. And this lets the wisdom of the crowd kind of speak a little bit more. It is pure global market cap portfolio, so no UK tilt in that range. And really importantly, we've actually had a similar construct for about four years now, where within the model portfolio side of our business, we've run a life strategy with that tilt called the classic range. And we've had a model portfolio, the global version, which doesn't have that tilt, so a very it's been very successful, kind of in that model portfolio wrapper. You know, we chose this January to announce that launch and to kind of make it available also in a unitized product as well.

Carl Widger: 1:03:15

Yeah. Okay, great. Tell us. How can let's talk about the ownership structure of Vanguard, because I think that's important in that that kind of leads into, how can a firm like Vanguard continue to cut fees when there's pressure the other way from an awful lot of other firms? Yes, it's,

Madison McCall: 1:03:34

it's such a great question, and and this is at the very basis one of the things I loved about Vanguard when I chose to come here. We are set up very differently. We have a very unique structure for an asset manager. So we have this mutual ownership model a mutual company, which means that we're ultimately owned by our investors. I don't think you can find another financial company that can say that. And on top of that, we're also not publicly traded, so we don't have to kind of think about the whims of external shareholders, either. So all of our attention it's on our investors, because, again, they're our owners. So when we benefit from scale, or if we find different efficiencies, those benefits, they go right back to the investors in the form of lower fees. So you know, our fee reductions, they're not a one off kind of marketing tactic. It's not trying to pull share away from someone else. It is really a sustainable process that's baked into the way that we've actually been set up as a company. So that key point I would leave you with is total alignment, which, again, is so unique for a financial company. We're owned by our investors, our incentives are completely aligned. And I like to say that gives us the ability, too, to think in decades rather than quarters, because we don't. We're not pressurized by those same short term kind of whims that others may face.

Carl Widger: 1:05:09

Yeah, and I love that that like you were always saying that the challenge in terms of talking to clients about investments is they're looking at, well, what happened last year and how did I do versus Johnny down in the pub, whereas we're trying to, you know, get them to focus on look, if you look at the long term, and I guess that's one of the reasons that at trap, we want to do align with Vanguard, because it is very long term. We sometimes are accused of being an echo chamber in that we look at investments from the point of view that there's no evidence that index investing won't do better than active fund management. However, I'm glad to have you on because I know there's the blended dynamic MPs being launched. So talk to me about that, and you're in a safe place, because it's only me, because the other three aren't here, and I'm just going to listen right, because I think it is good to get kind of the flip side of it. And clearly, if you're launching this, there's a demand for it. So tell me a little bit more

Madison McCall: 1:06:14

about definitely. So. So, you know, when we think about, I will call it product innovation and different demand that we've absolutely seen in the marketplace. But even from the advisor marketplace, we've noticed a trend. And to your point, it's caused us to launch a new product earlier this year. And you know, I know a lot of track listeners, they support the index side. I know that. I hear that, and of course, that absolutely resonates right with our flagship product. But something that we've been focused on, I'd say, especially in the last year or two, has been offering choice, different flavors, choice, to advisors and investors. And the demand we've seen has been this growing demand for blended solutions. And when I say blended solutions, I mean solutions that have, you know, building blocks that are indexed. You get that, but you also have active building blocks in there too. So you get this nice marriage of the two in, you know, for us, it's in a model, kind of portfolio wrapper, because we've seen advisors kind of looking for ways to combine, you know, your consistency, your cost efficiency of indexing with very selective, active exposure. So that's kind of led us to launch this new product. It's a partnership between Vanguard and one of our strongest and oldest partners, Wellington, where we're really focused on marrying those different components with very selective, high quality, active so for those that have that preference, that want that choice, we now have a great product kind of on offer for them in a model portfolio form.

Carl Widger: 1:08:00

So that's an innovation, right? So, but we're in probably a phase of unbelievable innovation, with AI coming to the fore and and I don't think most advisors are thinking in terms of AI and funds or asset management, because they're just thinking about, well, how is it going to change the nature of the job that we do? How can it make it better, and how can we get in front of more clients, but also probably a little bit of fear there that, you know, is my job going to be gone in 10 years time, or whatever, but specifically in the in your game, what? Kind of innovation do you see coming, and is that from Ai, or is there other innovation coming that you see?

Madison McCall: 1:08:43

Yeah, I think there is other innovation you besides some of those things we see on the product side. You know, I think innovation and outsource solutions, it's moving beyond just those investments themselves. More and more. It's got to be about the things that sit alongside those portfolios and products. So think about those planning tools, those behavioral kind of support elements. And it's more now than just picking portfolios from from my seat. It's about supporting advisors in the whole process, the whole journey, and a lot of that is behavioral. A lot of it is the tools and not just the products themselves. There's, of course, continued pressure on cost and transparency that's not going anywhere. You know, the expectation from advisors and clients is it's got to be a great product, it's got to be low cost, it's got to be transparent. And I'd also say we can't ignore the fact that advisors are increasingly looking to work with a smaller number of partners. So you know, again, it's moving beyond those funds. It's the service that can be provided and the support around those funds that has to be excellent. That's where I kind of think a lot of the real innovation is happening right now. It's around that service offer, around the

Carl Widger: 1:10:06

products, yeah, no, I like that. And look, to be fair, Vanguard have been amazing in terms of supporting advisors. You know, it's like, I think someone described it that, you know that the the investment game has been won. It's like, you know, we have the solutions over here, but where's the value add in terms of Vanguard to their clients, the advisors, right, directly, and what kind of supports, and like the Vanguard 365, and all of the other stuff that you're doing is, I think it's, I think it's sensational. There's only one or two who actually see what. What does real support look like for advisors? And I would encourage all advisors to all advisors, to engage in that. What's the one message Maddie that you'd like to advisors to take from this conversation?

Madison McCall: 1:10:55

Yeah, and thank you for, yeah, your words on the the research and tools, because that's our focus. I think I would leave advisors with, you know, the thought that we are genuinely on the same side as them and their clients. And it goes back to our ownership structure, right? But we're uniquely set up in that we are truly on the same. Side. We value what they do. We value financial advice and what we think it can build for normal people, the everyday person. And everything that we've built, all of the kind of freely available tools, the Vanguard 365, the research, the portals that we have on there, all of that is in support of of that mission at the same time, you know, our philosophy hasn't changed. I think we've always been really clear about what we do, and we do exactly what we say on the tin. We've been long term and low cost and very disciplined. And so you know what you're getting when you invest in a Vanguard product, or if you lean into some of that more service that we have painted around it as well.

Carl Widger: 1:12:01

Yeah, absolutely brilliant, Marty, it's been such a pleasure talking to you your your nine years. I don't know where that has gone. Did you start when you were 15 or something? But you're so you are so impressive, Maddie, and the very best of luck to you and all of your colleagues in Vanguard. And what I will say, please go and talk to your triplet sisters and say, Hey, girls, what mom and dad did for us was absolutely incredible. And then when you see your mom and your dad, give them big hug and go. I met somebody who knows what you went through, and they said, I should give you a hug and say, thanks.

Madison McCall: 1:12:35

I can definitely do that. Carl, thank you so much for having me absolute pleasure to be on to be on track. I love it.

Carl Widger: 1:12:43

Thank you so much, right? Let's get back to the studio for the latest pile of trap. Thank you, Maddie,

Alan Smith: 1:12:52

really good conversation. Carl, really good. Do you know the thing that gets me about Vanguard, I find particularly interesting is this, this thing that the mutual funds, the, sorry, the mutual status of the company. They're owned by the investors, which, there's not many, I can't think of any other company like that. But as a consequence of that, they continue to drive down their their fees, you know, essentially as, I mean, they're whatever they are, you know, the many trillions of dollars and pounds assets under management as they grow, so obviously their operational costs maintain, so they can reduce their fees. There's not another company that would do that. So it's the I don't know that. I really, I really love the ethos of the company. We know they're great. We know that a great place. We all, to varying degrees, use them. I recommend them anyway. If I've got sort of friends or family, just need to start an ISO or something. It's just the simplest entry level into proper long term investing. Go direct to them. But I really like the mutual status of that company. It's a superb

Andy Hart: 1:13:55

company. Yeah, agreed, yeah.

Carl Widger: 1:13:57

I think, I think, like we, we've all got to know a lot of the folks in Vanguard over the last while, probably a good bit better than we had there. They all totally buy into the values of it. You know, there's, there's a culture there that, you know, if any of us could say that all of our team was so indoctrinated into the culture, the values of the company, like they are, they seem to be at Vanguard. I think you're on to a winner, but yeah, look, as you say, great company, innovative products, way, way back, and now they're still trying to drive the fees down, you know, index investing, the way to go with Vanguard. I would say I thought

Nick Lincoln: 1:14:36

it I thought it was a really good interview. She's obviously a smart cookie, and the triplets thing obviously bonded you. And for those of you that think the trap is just done on the wing and a prayer and no research has ever done, ever Carl researched into his interviewee and found out the triplet story. Didn't he call and that was that was a bonding thing within the interview.

Carl Widger: 1:14:54

Yeah, I didn't actually believe it, so I saw it in a it was in an intro to another podcast that Maddie had done, and it said that, oh, Maddie is a triplet. I went, No way that is like, just crazy. So I asked her, then, before the before the interview, I also have to say, right, first Maddie, clearly, she's like, a big shot at Vanguard, so her time is very valuable. I had to try and do the interview with her three times because I couldn't get the tech working. So I made a promise never to tell anyone that. But here I am telling everybody. So, yeah, look, we, we, yeah. I just enjoyed the chat with her. She's coming to trap live so and so are my triplets. So that's going to be a pretty cool moment for me

Nick Lincoln: 1:15:37

when we got note that the recording actually gone smoothly for the third time. You could hear, you could hear the music from from Limerick. It was okay. So well, we're one hour, 20 minutes into the show, more or less. Let's move on to the next part of the show, the TRAPPIST questions. This is where post is at my front door. There she goes. She's hauled the bulging sack of TRAPPIST questions up my drive to Lincoln Lodge. And every week, every episode, I reach and then pull one, pull one out. And if you want to leave a question with us, go to the pin, tweet on x, the pin Dex on tweet. Leave you on. There's a link there. Leave your question order. It through the so called show notes. We are getting through them all. We still got quite a few to go to. Let's have a look and see who this one is from. Got a quite a classy envelope, saliva went to seal this one down, struggling a bit with it. This is from, oh, by the way, this is the 100 and 50th question that we've answered in on the show. I want to get that in there. So, yeah, as we're going through these episodes, we were there's a mother load of value in these questions. And this question has been asked before in different forms and different guises, and the three other Trappists now reading it the first time, because prep is not our strong point. This question has been asked numerous times before, but we're going to answer all the questions respectfully. Okay, if you submit a question, we will answer it. Sometimes we'll have more time for it because it's a new question. Other times we'll say we've done this before. This is our view. The question is from Richard Paulson. He says, prior to becoming full fat financial planners, some of you, I believe, were advising clients to invest in active funds, I appreciate that this has now rightfully changed. How did that conversation go with clients? Have you ever had a client call you out for transitioning to passive, questioning your values and previous advice? Be great to know what it was like at the time. I suspect many advisors are about to embark on that journey, if compliance allows keep spreading the Lord's word. Yeah, really, really good question. Although you said Lord's word, you didn't put an apostrophe in lords, and the Lord is owning the word, so it should be possessive. Never mind, Richard, one step at a time, I'm gonna first go on this, and then we go, I see your hands, right? Sorry, I've asked this before. I think it's a big thing in our heads. And then you tell clients, and they really don't give a fig, because they trust you and believe you. And I must have had this conversation. 2008 2009 because that's when I made that kind of move with all of my clients. I can't even remember how it went. It's just like, so, just done it. So I think it's something that you live with this fear in your head that they're going to somehow think that you've, you're a cheapskate, or you're, you know, you've got no character. They don't care if they trust you and the relationships there, they'll take what they won't even understand what you're talking about, to be honest, because it's you saying they'll go, they'll go, Yeah, whatever storyteller,

Alan Smith: 1:18:20

I think you're right that if, again, back to it's been a client of yours for a long time, they ought to just say, Yeah, whatever you said, That's right. Let's just do it. Nick but I'll tell you. And again, I think, yes, we did probably talk about this, but what we did so we did it obviously quite a long time ago, having been using active funds. So if there was pushback, the framework that that I used was depending on what what sector, what industry that client either works in or had worked in before they retired, I'd say, let's say it was medical professionals. I mean, just say, was there? How is the makeup? 150 different stories. Alan, yeah, you are. Well, if, if you got any, if anyone's questioning it or querying it, all, I would say, all we were saying to them was, how has technology changed in your set, in your industry, in the last few years? That was the story. And everyone would say, oh, beyond all recognition. It's just just crazy. And we've made the point that is our it is our duty to avail ourselves of the latest innovation, the latest technology, the latest ideas, the latest insights. And they would go, yeah, yeah. That makes that makes sense. And say, well, our research has indicated that they go, all right. That makes perfect sense. So in other words, relate it to their own situation. Know that things change and things move fast, and it is our duty to avail of you the latest thinking. And that's what it is. It's an evolution. We're not saying we were 100% wrong before, really. Sorry, there's something else. It's saying we are continuing to evolve, like every sector and every industry does and should do. That was my point. What did? What did you do? Andy, I

Andy Hart: 1:19:54

don't have too much to say on this, because I only spent months in active management, so the bulk of my career has been asset class investing, but reading between the lines of Richard's question, I'm not sure if he's alluding to a big switch at SJP, because now they offer this huge passive index range. I'm reading between the lines. I don't know if he's referring is he at SJP, Richard? I'm not too sure. But as independent advisors, when we switch from recommended active managers to asset class invest in index investing, we have to follow it in a certain process. But within your company that used to just be purely active management has now got this range of passive so. So I think from a compliance point of view, if you can access the same thing for cheaper, I think Compliance would say the right thing is to go down.

Alan Smith: 1:20:48

Yeah, yeah. But hang on, I get that. And that's that is actually quite interesting. But the the people who are against index investing would say, but you're never going to beat the market. That's the this is the whole point. You're going to be market, minus costs, so you always underperform the market. The thing about active management is it sells you hope, right? Despite all the data we've talked about, it says, Well, if you, if you do invest with this fund manager, that fund manager, you. Got a chance of outperforming the market. These ones, you've got zero chance of outperforming. But it's, it's kind of subtle, but it's really, really important, because it shifts the emphasis on what we're trying to do here. The key thing this is all joined up. The key thing is proper financial planning. You are here. You want to get there. We're going to get you there the most simple, reliable way. But if you've been selling, we are going to beat the market the last 10 years or 20 years, or whatever. It's a different conversation to be having, because if I was the client, I'd say, Well, hang on a minute. So now we're locking into underperforming the market. So you've got to be, I think you just got to be really, really prepared for those conversations. See, the emphasis is on planning, and we're going to get you there in the most reliable way.

Nick Lincoln: 1:21:56

Yeah, well, that's the point you made there. If you sold your thing about being, you know, alpha, Seeking Alpha, then it's a harder conversation, for sure. If you sold about planning, it shouldn't really be an issue. Richard Paulson is an SJP advisor, as Andy said, they have made this, they have brought in this, this, this passive range sit alongside their active proposition. So, yeah, go ahead.

Andy Hart: 1:22:13

Sorry. I wonder what we're gonna see over time. Let's just assume before these new passive range came, passive range came in, it was 100% active. Fast forward the first five years, what percentage is an index? Fast forward 10 years, what percentage is an index? It's going to be very interesting to see. I think it's SJP that.

Nick Lincoln: 1:22:29

Mean the compliance won't matter. They won't care because it's part of it's one of their products, you know. That's not why you're bringing in external compliance

Andy Hart: 1:22:35

there, you know. But they might have a leaning towards, if you are going to access a global equity fund, the default is the passive one that costs three times less. I'm just again, yeah, but I'm

Nick Lincoln: 1:22:48

saying so compliance won't be in the way compliance. So compliance won't be in the way. They'll be pro going to Yeah, what Richard says, If compliance allows, you know, inferring that it could be an issue to get a pass compliance. So not where he is. I wouldn't. Is, I wouldn't imagine at all. Okay, what are we at now best part of an hour, nearly up to an hour and a half. Okay, let's move on to that part of the show that many people call culture corner. Now, you definitely cannot call

Carl Widger: 1:23:19

this car, okay, yeah, the MacBook Neo. And I knew that if I, if I proposed some technology solutions, that you'd all jump all over me. So I've included a podcast that says that the MacBook Neo is absolutely amazing. So I was in the market for a personal laptop, and I was like, all things tech going, Oh, Jesus Christ. Have you got a Mac call? There's about 100 of them. I do. Oh, my God, it's beautiful.

Unknown: 1:23:53

You're okay using it. You've got, you've got your head around it quickly,

Carl Widger: 1:23:57

I wouldn't say quickly, but

Alan Smith: 1:24:00

that's the new kind of light touch entry level one.

Carl Widger: 1:24:04

Yeah, so it's in Ireland. It's 799 quid for the extra memory. It's run on your iPhone, whatever, blah, blah, blah system. So don't

Andy Hart: 1:24:16

get too technical on us now call writing systems like the iPhone that's totally passed me by,

Carl Widger: 1:24:21

and it's absolutely amazing, and it's beautiful. Oh, this everybody has seen it says, Oh my God, that's gorgeous, as in my kids. And I'm like, yeah, it is. Yeah. So anyway, there's a podcast, and it's 20 minutes long, and it's saying all the reasons why. If you're in the market for a personal laptop, this is the only one to buy, and obviously it's cheaper than a lot of the other ones out there. So I'm,

Alan Smith: 1:24:50

by the way, I'm loving this car, which is teaching Andy Hart about MacBook. Heart's never heard of it before. This is,

Andy Hart: 1:24:58

did you see this in America or something? Carl, no,

Carl Widger: 1:25:00

I didn't. I listened to the podcast. I bought it in Ireland, and then I went to America last week, as you know, my kids. And it is everywhere. It is, like, MacBook Neo. Everybody is. And Chloe, who's over there, said, Yeah, everybody has a MacBook Neo. Now everybody has up.

Nick Lincoln: 1:25:16

And would you say?

Andy Hart: 1:25:19

Would you say it's closer to the iPad, Carl, than a laptop?

Nick Lincoln: 1:25:27

Okay, shall we say this for the apple? For the apple,

Carl Widger: 1:25:30

it's definitely a good bit bigger. No, it's closer to a laptop. It is definitely Okay, cool. It is a laptop.

Unknown: 1:25:36

There'll be loads of people listening to this thing, and what is he on about googling it? Apple Neo, like,

Alan Smith: 1:25:42

I've heard a lot of people talk about it.

Unknown: 1:25:44

It's a proper it's a proper smoothie, right?

Alan Smith: 1:25:47

Let's move on. I have Nick still next on Android, so that's a different conversation

Nick Lincoln: 1:25:52

as more than half the world anyway. Let's move on. Not way more than half the world actually. Let's move on.

Andy Hart: 1:25:58

I don't know. On. I don't trust people. I don't trust people with Android I don't trust

Nick Lincoln: 1:26:02

people who follow cults. It's the first product map on about decade. Move on. Okay.

Andy Hart: 1:26:07

I've got two recommendations. The first one is from a close personal friend of the show, Mr. Pete Matthews, who set up a podcast with his daughter, Kate, who. Works with him, which is a very nice story, that daughter can work with father in the financial planning business, so she helps out with marketing. And also they've got a podcast called bank of dad. It's on all the podcast platforms and on YouTube. Next up is a repeating podcast guest on Chris Williamson's show modern wisdom. Gowinda Bogle, 19 uncomfortable truths about human nature. I massive fan of this guy. Gowinda Bogle, I've mentioned many times on the podcast, but not for a while. Check it out. It's got some very interesting thinking. Have you listened to it?

Alan Smith: 1:26:54

Smithy, I have not, but I'm seeing my it's my list because you sent it to me. You said it's really good,

Andy Hart: 1:26:59

brilliant. Okay, great. Over to you for the final

Alan Smith: 1:27:03

little bit off piece. But linking bank of dad with most recent book that I've read another close personal friend, maybe an ex, close personal friend, to be fair, Professor Scott Galloway, his most recent book. It's called notes on being a man. All of us have got sons, right? And it's just very interesting the what's going on in the world night, obviously, nothing to do with money or finance or anything, although there are parts in it about work and work life. But if anyone has got sons and or or brothers or or brothers, or whatever. I just think it's a very, very interesting and relevant for its time book about being a man in the 21st Century. Bit off piece, but I enjoyed it. There we go. All done.

Nick Lincoln: 1:27:50

Good stuff, good stuff. I don't have a culture corner. I did listen to Galloway on Simon Sinek podcast, and for about three quarters of the show, he was all right. Then he sort of reverted to his asshole persona. Asshole persona at the end. So I didn't put it in, okay, Episode

Carl Widger: 1:28:02

93 you put it in a few episodes ago, and I listened to it, Simon, Simon, this one, did I Yeah, you did. Oh, I'm sorry. And I had to sit through it. Then, yeah, so you did mention,

Nick Lincoln: 1:28:12

well, he was talking about this book, wasn't it? Was this? Yeah, it was all right. Then he just got, he just can't help

Andy Hart: 1:28:17

himself. Has Galloway got an apple Neo?

Carl Widger: 1:28:21

Probably not. He will know, right? It was mentioned on the trap podcast the sales of the Mac. It's a Mac Book Neo, just to say Andy, just

Nick Lincoln: 1:28:35

pluggie. Pluggy operating system.

Unknown: 1:28:38

Now, just gotta work out what color. Yeah, I got

Nick Lincoln: 1:28:42

the 30 browser windows open. Okay, dear TRAPPIST is episode close? Another pile of traps slides down the U Bender, Father Time. Thank you for your precious time. Thank you for your great reviews. Thank you for the questions. Do keep them firing in like and subscribe to our burgeoning YouTube channel. We are monetizing it so big, he wouldn't believe it. We are influencers, influencers, sofas, whatever you want to call it anyway, until the next episode, 94 coming out two weeks time. Take care out there, folks, and we will see you on the other side. Eight more tickets for trap live may 13. Buy them now. Goodbye. Bye. Bye. Those tickets. You I remember to play the music.

Alan Smith: 1:29:22

It's gonna pretty good, pretty, pretty, pretty.