Mutterings into their claret this week as the Treasury Select Committee’s suggestion to delay the RDR are immediately knocked back by the FSA. “The Treasury Select Committee deprecate the Authority’s action” which I think is as close to swearing and word play as Westminster gets. I suspect egos will keep this ball in the air for a while yet.

In the interim, what are advisers and providers to do? I think there’s a lot to be learnt from the newer wrap providers here. Read the writing on the wall and get on with it before being mandated to act in certain ways. They all built their businesses to be as RDR-ready as they could (before the FSA chucked in a few rebate curveballs). It’s a tough one. I hear at first hand the real challenges over qualifications and the move to fees. If advisers didn’t have day jobs, this would be easier to get on with, and it’s too easy for Big Plc to overlook the time pressures of running small businesses. On the other hand, we have known that this has been coming for a long time now and at some point we’re going to have to bite the bullet and get on with it.

We believe that the FSA Platform Paper will be out next week. If it is we’ll comment on it here and thanks in advance to Nucleus’ David Ferguson and Transact’s Ian Taylor for agreeing to comment too. Thanks also to Alan Sherriff for his “emergency biscuit” cartoon!

This week the big story for me is the £45 flat fee for all of Fidelity customers. First, I think this is a bold move, a brave move and I think it will see results. Fidelity was already extremely competitive price-wise. Now they’re getting dangerously close to ‘no-brainer’ for certain client sizes and portfolios. I wonder how long before a flat fee is more widely adopted – and how long before we see a flat platform fee to an adviser practice? But I digress….

Second, with a D2C platform and a DC platform too, there is the potential to grow scale substantially in all these accelerating markets which could benefit all clients if the potential conflicts can be managed. We noted the internal shuffle a month ago which seemed to put clearer heads in charge of each of these three platform channels and this re-focus seemed sensible and timely.

So two ticks for Fidelity who – to my mind – have become very relevant again after a quiet period and who, strategically, feel like they are bang on the money to us. But before they go around bigging themselves up too much chez Cannon St HQ, we still mark the rebate disclosure and access to investment vehicles as a Could Try Harder ;0)

Good weekend all. Given the forecast, a day in the sweaty smelly confines of Kentish Town Soft Play beckons tomorrow. Oh the joy……

Holly