It’s funny how we seem to be on a carousel rather than a straight line where the crazy world of financial services is concerned.

It only struck merecently that the latest round of job cuts, consolidations, mergers and takeovers has been a symptom of our industry for quite a few years now. You have to be adaptable to change in financial services. Only recently we have seen Resolution buying first Friends Provident and then the newly merged group buy most of the interests of Axa. As if that wasn’t enough the combined group (called Friends Life I believe) has just bid for the protection part of BUPA. I hope that you are keeping up with all this so far.

On top of this we have some big players in the market redfining what they want to offer. Take Aegon for example.

All this has a very old feel to it. The same thing happened after 2001 when Stakeholder Pensions were introduced. The pensions market was decimated as the government placed a price cap on products. I have umbrellas in my office that have lasted far longer than the product providers that gave them to me!

I can’t help thinking that having lived the the whole thing about five years ago there’s more consolidation and repositioning on the way. It all gets terribly confusing for a simple IFA like me to keep up with all the name changes and who owns what. That’s not the main issue.

It’s unlikley that the general public’s suspicion of financial products will be improved by the merry go round of mergers, changes and strategic reviews that we are seeing.

With the NEST monster still coming over the corporate hill it’s likely that we’ll see even more financial pressure on pension providers. I can here the merger carousel creaking into life as we speak.

Never mind, when the music stops we can all get off. By that time there’ll probably only be two providers left AvivaFriendsLegal&GeneralPrudential and ScottishLifeWidowsStandardLife. 

Yours until the monster arrives.

Steve