Is wealth moving to the freemium model?
Price is just one of marketing’s four Ps, but a critical one for obvious reasons. Among other things, price determines how much can be paid for distribution, it affects perceptions of quality and – clearly – has a big impact on profitability. So what happens when a competitor starts offering a product very similar to […]
Read more...Mercado Released [18 May 2015]: EUROZONE ECONOMIC GROWTH
Eurozone economic growth accelerated in the first quarter of 2015, as both Italy and France attained positive growth rates for the period. The Euro area grew by 0.4% during the first three months of the year, beating the UK and US. This marks the fastest rate of growth the zone has seen in the past […]
Read more...The BT Equity Income Series – Can complexity sell?
Source: Tria Investment Partners Managed Funds Review December 2014, Morningstar In 2012 BTIM launched its direct to market Equity Income Series, two funds targeting the pre- and post-retirement sectors. The funds were launched with a flourish of targeted marketing materials and communications designed to communicate the benefits to investors. Going against the post-GFC trend towards […]
Read more...Mercado Released [11 May 2015]: US ECONOMIC GROWTH
The US economy grew at a slower rate than what was expected, achieving a growth rate of only 0.2% for the first three months of the year. Analysts had forecast a growth rate of 1.0% for the same period. Despite the fact that the US managed to achieve a high level of growth in 2014, […]
Read more...Is Trowbridge fixing a problem that doesn’t exist?
As the life insurance industry counts down toward the deadline for resolving adviser remuneration for life insurance, like many in the industry we are asking ourselves – how did it come to this? We see two primary issues the insurance industry needs to resolve: The quality of advice provided to clients and the resulting quality […]
Read more...Mercado Released [4 May 2015]: The Producer Price Index
Producer prices climbed in March, on the back of higher food, tobacco and beverage prices. PPI for the third month of the year moved to 3.1% on a year-on-year basis and 1.8% on a month-on-month basis. PPI is a relative measure of the average change in the price of a basket of representative goods and […]
Read more...Internalisation: the end of the world as we know it?
Many of Australia’s largest super funds have been progressively increasing headcount in their internal investment teams. Some have very rapidly built out their teams – although this is more the exception than the rule – and AustralianSuper is the first with an internal investment team of more than 100 staff. Asset managers are wondering: how […]
Read more...Mercado Released [20 April 2015]: Electricity production expansion has been lagging the economy growth
Electricity production expansion has been lagging the economy growth – putting pressure to the already old existing power generation plants. Since 1994 a total of 6 million households have been added to the national grid. We believe addition of these households to the grid is not a major cause of power shortages because Eskom’s sales […]
Read more...If you build it, will they come? What can Australia learn from the UK’s D2C wrap platform market?
The Australian and UK wealth markets have a lot in common… Retail platform markets which are both roughly A$600b in size Both now have compulsory defined contribution employer funded pension/superannuation saving systems1 Both have large and mature financial advice industries (albeit UK licensees are far more independently owned; this point becomes important further down) Both […]
Read more...Mercado Released [13 April 2015]: Global Oil prices in the spotlight
GLOBAL OIL PRICES IN THE SPOTLIGHT The US oil rig count dropped by 42 to 760 last week, the largest drop in four weeks. America has lost more than half its oil rigs since October 2014 as the collapse in crude prices caused drillers to scale back. The rig count has dropped 53% since October […]
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