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.
“Is vertical integration good for advisers?”
I think the point here should be, is it good for clients? Vertical integration is not something you find when googling tractors, rather the ownership of the means of distribution by a manufacturer.
