The Broad Brush  

A regular analysis of strategic marketing issues in the European investment business

In each edition we aim briefly to describe a selection of the issues in one area of the investment landscape across which we roam in our varied strategic research assignments.

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March 11 - Number 8 - Fiduciary Management - Getting to grips with the finer details Everyone has heard of Fiduciary Management. It has grown to become a prominent part of the institutional asset management and consulting business in Europe. And yet ... no one seems entirely clear what it is. We try to clarify.

March 11 - Number 7 - DC pensions - A Fruitful Segmentation of the market Like an orange, the DC market in the UK is both one big thing, and several segments. We have found that the segments are each quite different. Without understanding the differences in the segments, you cannot understand the whole "fruit".

Sep 10 - Number 6 -  Collective Communications Solving the communications problem in DC Pensions will be helped by a new “collective” model, where members of many schemes are communicated to at the same time.   This already happens in other countries, and we predict that it will start to emerge in the UK.

Nov 09 - Number 5 - The DC gold rush Few people would associate the UK DC market with a gold rush. Now may be the time for a rethink. We go so far as to suggest that the DC gold rush could throw up a new pool of £600bn in assets.

Aug 09 - Number 4 - The many futures of European Asset Management Planning has never been so tough. In this new piece we offer some highlights from the “Five Futures” study that was published recently in partnership with Alpha Financial Markets Consulting. We hope you find it useful.

April 09 - Number 3 - From Backwater to mainstream. Offshore Distribution comes of age As markets start to recover, we think that one of the most attractive opportunities will be catering to upwardly mobile professionals from developing markets via distribution networks in the International Financial Centres. We asked distributors in three of these centres what they wanted from their providers.

Feb 09 - Number 2 - Thought Leadership - A top tool for troubled times 'Thought Leadership' is an ideal tool for the current climate. It delivers the Sales Team’s need for fresh conversation openings in these fast-changing times, and Marketing’s need for a low-cost communications channel in an era of vanishing budgets.

Nov 08 - Number 1 - Factories, Homes and Cottages. A new look at the architecture of private banking in Europe As the dust eventually settles on the financial landscape, there will be two businesses less damaged than most: Private Banking and Wealth Management. Existing classifications give little clue to the underlying patterns. We suggest a new Segmentation.