Full fat is going mainstream (and recruitment is noticing)
Episode 102 covered a lot of ground. Here are the highlights.
The public culture and the private culture
James Barden has spent 20 years placing financial planners. He works exclusively with firms doing proper financial planning: strong recurring income models, clear client propositions, advisers who are accountable for the advice they give rather than picking products off a shelf.
What he said about firm culture is worth sitting with.
Most firms have two cultures. The public one: the website, the messaging, the words like 'lifestyle financial planning' and 'evidence-based.' And then the private one: the lived experience of actually working there.
The gap between the two is where careers go wrong. An adviser joins a firm that talks a good game, is six months in, and realises the financial planning process they were promised does not exist. The boss does not do the plans. Someone else produces a report. The clients are being shoehorned into an in-house model.
James's advice if you are considering a move: ask to see the financial planning process. The actual planning. Ask to sit with someone and watch them build a plan. If that request makes the interviewer uncomfortable, you have your answer.
It is a significant life decision. Treat it like one.
The Nevada question nobody asks
We talked about NEST's announced ambition to allocate up to 30% of auto-enrolled pension funds into private markets, including private credit and private equity. The workers enrolled into these schemes did not choose that. They were defaulted in.
The parallel we kept coming back to: local authority pension funds, run by committees who hire expensive external consultants to justify complexity that would dissolve if anyone asked the obvious question. The Nevada state pension system runs on a tiny team, buys global equities in the cheapest available funds, and consistently outperforms the elaborate alternatives. It is a known fact. It is just inconvenient for everyone whose job depends on the complexity.
Nobody gets fired for inviting ten consultants in to pitch. That is the whole problem.
The disengaged client
Nick raised a situation that most advisers will recognise. A referred client, nice people, paying their fee, but responding to review invitations for two years with silence. The question: what do you do?
His answer was honest and practical. He reached out to the referrer, got the clients back on the phone, and moved them to a three-year review cycle rather than annual. He stayed on the front foot: if something legislative or tax-related affects their situation, he contacts them. Otherwise, the relationship sits quietly until they are ready.
Dave Quinn made the point that landed hardest. The fact that clients are willing to keep paying whilst barely engaging is itself evidence of value. They want you in their corner. The peace of mind of knowing someone is watching is part of what the fee buys.
That is worth remembering when a review goes unanswered.
Die with Zero
Dave also recommended Bill Perkins' book 'Die with Zero.' The argument is simple: stop overshooting. Give money to your children when they actually need it, rather than when they are 65 and you have finally gone. Spend when you can still enjoy it.
In Ireland right now, Dave is watching clients with significant wealth, often built through tech stock options and entrepreneurial activity, sit on it out of fear. The memory of 2008 runs deep. The book is a useful tool for that conversation.
One thing to do before next week
Put your client agreement into ChatGPT or Claude. Tell it to challenge the document as if it were a prospective client reading it for the first time. Ask it what the problems are.
Andy did this with his own agreement, version 21, and got useful feedback. A few things he had not noticed. One observation about merging a marketing document with a legal agreement that he is now rethinking.
Your clients' children are going to do this with everything you have ever produced. Finding the gaps yourself first is the sensible move.
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All of this came out of episode 102 of the Real Adviser Podcast. James Barden's full conversation with Alan is in there, along with everything else we covered: SJP, inheritance tax investigations, pension consolidation ahead of April 2027, and the attitude to risk questionnaire Andy had to complete for his six-year-old.
Watch the full episode here:
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