“Quilter completes £445m sale of assurance business”

Jan 19, 2020 | Companies

Once upon a time in Financial Services Land, a company called Skandia Life had innovative, high-tech pension plans and very switched-on chaps (chapesses in financial services were rarer-still back then) who came to tell us about them. Then they became Old Mutual and the switched-on chaps disappeared, never to be heard from again. Now they’re called Quilter and have just flogged those once-innovative plans to Reassure, a retirement-home-cum-hospice for old life insurance and pension policies. They call it moving forward. I call it moving backwards. Let’s call the whole thing off.

“Amazon invades financial services with home insurance launch”

Oct 25, 2022 | Companies

Amazon, like Musk, and Branson before them both, can afford to try lots of stuff and fail at some.

“Natwest and trio of private equity firms vie for Quilter”

Aug 2, 2022 | Companies

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.

“Nutmeg losses climb 28% after JPMorgan takeover”

Jun 30, 2022 | Companies

If you’re offering cheap, online investment advice, you need volume to make it profitable. To get volume (ie lots of money), you need marketing (to get lots of people to log in and give you money). And that costs, particularly, as will inevitably be the case, most of...