“Tilney Smith & Williamson to rebrand as Evelyn Partners”

Mar 3, 2022 | Companies

Tags: branding, Evelyn Partners, logo, Tilney Smith & Williamson

Our industry has seen many strange and doubtless very expensive rebranding decisions. Standard Life to Abrdn (try spell-checking that), Liverpool Victoria to LV= and even Allied Dunbar to Openwork. Time and again companies in all sectors pay fortunes to buy a great and established brand name, only to ditch it and spend yet more lining the pockets of marketing agencies. And here’s the latest. Tilney, and especially Smith & Williamson have a heritage and (pretty good) reputation. Evelyn Partners sounds like an Edwardian seamstress (with apologies to anyone called Evelyn Partners and to surviving Edwardian seamstresses; but you know what I mean). Why?

“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...