Here’s another brick in the ‘we’ve seen it all before’ wall. The mighty Pru once ruled the financial advice market, with armies of ‘Men from’ knocking on doors, selling insurance, savings plans and pensions and actually doing a lot of good for a lot of people. A wise, new CEO or two came along, decided their salespeople/advisers were too expensive and difficult to manage, so made them all redundant. Roll forward twenty years or so, and the Pru, having bought M&G, is now called M&G (I know). Their current CEO has decided it’s a great idea to have financial advisers out there advising and flogging what are now M&G plans, policies and investments; so great that he wants them to be ‘a top five player’. So having forked out all that redundancy money, they’re now forking out some pretty big, I would guess, bucks to buy in firms of financial advisers to be M&G advisers. I’d love to know how many of those will turn out to be run by former Men from the Pru. Wouldn’t that would make a truly ironic full-circle.
“Natwest and trio of private equity firms vie for Quilter”
In the 80s and 90s, banks and building societies bought life insurance, pension companies and fund managers, took on lots of financial advisers and sold financial products by the bucket-load, by means both fair and foul, to their customers.
