David Ferguson

Now that we are past the half way mark of 2008, I thought this would be a good time to consider what the rest of the year may have in store for the platform market.

IFA-owned wrap platform Nucleus has appointed Neil Howitt as finance director.

It's been a funny month since the last entry! After the near euphoria-inducing announcement from Cofunds that the UK Platform Group (UKPG) had got its act together and would be implementing an ISO-based platform-to-platform solution by the end of Q1 2008,...

I was fantastically pleased to hear this week that the UK Platform group has finally agreed to work on a long overdue solution to allow platform to platform to reregistration.

Only adviser firms "masquerading" under an independent banner while colluding with life and pension providers have anything to fear from the RDR, says Nucleus Financial Group's David Ferguson.

I don't know if it's just me but the segmentation of the wrap market seems to have taken a further turn in the last few days.

‘Factory gate pricing' is the great new buzzphrase in the consultancy and life assurance sectors. But behind the terminology what does it really mean?

Not sure if it's just me that has a good laugh about this, but I've managed to spend an amusing late morning musing on the latest results announcements from Aviva and Standard Life.

It seems I'm a little late with this but perversely it has given me the opportunity to have a wee chuckle at some of the very recent goings on in the sector.

So, four weeks on, what's changed? To pick out two of the biggest news items is a bit tricky as there seems to have been a lot going on. On that basis I'll grab the two things that tickled me the most.