Category: Miscellaneous

The Perils of Offensive Tweets

Posted on | by Arthur Beverly | Leave a Comment on The Perils of Offensive Tweets

Nothing to do with finance but…

Here’s something we all know, but is important to be reminded about…

Two of the most successful films in the past few years are Disney’s ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ films.

Both have made a lot of money, been widely praised, and have turned the actors into household names.

But the films’ creator/director James Gunn was sacked from making the next sequel – because of offensive tweets he sent 10+ years ago.

And this reminded me…  if someone like him – who’s made his employer £billions – can be sacked for this sort of thing, anyone can.

I’ve spoken with my kids about this, and how essential it is to remember that anyone can see what they post – not just the people it’s intended for.

I’ve told them about the times when my company has interviewed people and been impressed by them, only to check their social media pages and realise they aren’t professional or appropriate enough for us.

So this Tip is just flagging something we all know. But it’s worth reminding ourselves about. And/or telling our children and newer colleagues. As I said to my kids…

… assume the ‘Person You Most Want To Impress’ read everything you’ve posted – would there be anything you wished they hadn’t seen?

… assume your biggest ‘enemy’ read it, is there anything there they could use to hurt you?

If so…

Action Point

… remove it now!

 

(With acknowledgement to Andy Bounds who reminded me of this maxim.  See andybounds.com)

Greetings, Your Highness!

Posted on | by Arthur Beverly | Leave a Comment on Greetings, Your Highness!

Before you think we’re taking pandering to a whole new level, here’s something you probably didn’t know about yourself: you’re descended from nobility.  Maybe even Royalty.

“How do we know that?,” you may ask. It’s actually just simple maths. As it turned out, you only have to go back about 600 years.

How can that be? Well, you have two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents and so on. This would mean that, if you went back just a thousand years, you would have billions of forebears. But, as you probably know, there weren’t billions of people back then.

Therefore the answer is that every European living today is related to every person who lived in Europe a thousand years ago. So Charlemagne, for instance, is a distant relative of literally every modern-day European.

This isn’t just true for Europeans, though. It’s equally true if you’re from Africa or Asia, in which case you can count Nefertiti or Genghis Khan among your ancestors.

So it doesn’t matter who you are; you’ve got nobility in your genes.

When you hear the word “President,” what comes to mind?

Posted on | by Arthur Beverly | Leave a Comment on When you hear the word “President,” what comes to mind?

When you hear the word “president,” what comes to mind? Probably the president of the United States, right?

Even though there are many presidents in the world, the word has become closely linked to America. But have you ever wondered why the person in office is called “president” in the first place?

Enter the president

At the end of the American Revolutionary War, it fell to a small group, the Founding Fathers, to decide how this new country should be governed.

The result was a constitutional democracy built on the principle of dividing power among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. At the head of this new governmental system would be a new kind of office: the “president.” This person would lead the government, take responsibility for day-to-day decision-making and be its outward representative.

Naming this new office had proven particularly tricky. Many of the words that seemed obvious, like “governor” and “prime minister,” were rejected because they were associated with the British. Eventually, they settled on the more neutral word “president,” from the Latin “praesidere,” meaning to “preside over.” This term still carried a sense of authority, but was free from any British connotations.

Outsource your memory

Posted on | by Arthur Beverly | Leave a Comment on Outsource your memory

You enter the Supermarket.  “Bread, butter, toothpaste, onions. Bread, butter, toothpaste, onions. ”  A nearby customer glances at you quizzically as you mumble your list under your breath.  Twenty minutes later, you leave the store with a cart full of food – but no toothpaste!

Familiar?

You’re not a storage device

One of Lifes’ truisms is that we forget things – whether it’s groceries, someone’s birthday or, horror of horrors, an important meeting – because our brains weren’t designed to store everything perfectly.

To remedy this, maybe we should outsource our memory. And that means writing things down. But it’s more than the trusty shopping list.  That is, all your thoughts and ideas, work-related and home-related, should be committed to the page as they occur.

In a meeting? Get the whiteboard out, scribble on it and take a pic of it before you leave. Profound realization over breakfast? Note down that you need to spend more time with your family.

There’s no ground breaking innovation in jotting things down, but doing so consistently will unload the worries and to-dos from your stressed brain onto a safe place where they won’t be forgotten.

Just be sure to always have a small notepad or your phone at the ready. The latter, which we always have with us, don’t we, has a Notepad App. Specifically for these occurrences. Try it!

 

But don’t forget to look at it !!!!!!

 

 

Digital advice to drive down costs

Posted on | by JD | Leave a Comment on Digital advice to drive down costs

“Most advisers take the view that the RDR (Retail Distribution Review) which is essence removed commission from investment products, provided the quality of advice but effectively reduced the distribution of it. Most will conduct a face to face fact-finding meeting but finding a way to do it remotely, lowers the cost associated with the advice process.

Less face-to-face doesn’t necessarily impact on the adviser-client relationship, as long as it is face-to-face when it needs to be,” says a prominent member of the IFA community.

Indeed he, – a member of the FCA’s Smaller Business Practitioner Panel since 2014 – sees client home visits being a thing of the past fairly soon.

“Two or three client visits a day is as much as I can do if I’m travelling. But if I’m hosting client meetings from my office I can do six, easily. It’s about the efficiency of labour and the associated impact on costs.

And he adds, Advisers are not as tuned to this as they might be, as they don’t record their time on the whole.

“Recording their time will give them more insight. Combine this with the increased use of digital assistance, and you have reasonable potential to drive costs down without reducing the quality of advice,” he says.

 

A cold call to chill the heart

Posted on | by Arthur Beverly | Leave a Comment on A cold call to chill the heart

William Burrows, a Retirement Director at Better Retirement, writes in Professional Adviser, a publication intended to serve the Financial Services industry, about a cold call he received personally last week and which is yet another illustration of why this practice of cold calling must be stopped. His article went on as follows:-

“It is time to stop unscrupulous firms cold calling. The gist of a cold call to me personally early this week should send shivers down the spine of all good financial advisers.

I was walking down the road to get a sandwich when I answered a call on my mobile. “Have you transferred your pension to a SIPP?” I was asked. To which I replied that I had.

Then without pause or hesitation, Sam from a company called Pension Reclaim rattled off a serious of false facts that made me extremely angry. The conversation, to the best of memory, went as follows:

“If you transferred to a high-risk SIPP, you might be able to get compensation.” In response to which I asked: “Why is a SIPP high-risk?”. Then came the most shocking part.

Sam replied: “When you took out the SIPP, your adviser probably asked you about your attitude to risk and you probably said you were low or medium-risk but he would have put you into a high-risk fund and made a lot of money out of it.”

That may not be the conversation word for word as I was not recording – and yet it is 100% the essence of what was said. At this point, then, I got very angry and said I was an adviser and it was outrageous to suggest advisers would knowingly put their clients in funds that were not suitable for their risk profile.

I then asked for full details of the person who was speaking and the name of his company so I could make a complaint against them but Sam would not give me his surname, said the company was Pension Reclaim and refused to give a contact number.

I searched for Pension Reclaim on Google but found no relevant results and then tried to call the incoming number on my mobile – 07480 024287. A search on the Who called me? website revealed a catalogue of complaints about this number.

On the one hand, I know I should not get worked up about this because it is just a reflection of the fake news and call-centre driven world we now live in. On the other hand, it is simply not acceptable that:

  • Cold callers can give such misleading information;
  • These companies make serious allegations against advisers when they themselves are not regulated; and
  • Firms like this cannot be contacted in order to make a complaint.

I have no idea where it would have ended if I had been someone else and had been persuaded that I had transferred into a ‘high-risk SIPP’. But it does now appear that cold-callers are trying to have two bites of the cherry – calling people once in order to sell them high-risk investments and then calling them again to refer them to a claims-handling company”.

William Burrows is Retirement Director at Better Retirement and was writing in Professional Adviser.