Leading industry pensions and advice sector experts have welcomed Labour’s victory as a chance to push forward some key financial reforms but some have raised questions about the clarity of Labour's pension and advice priorities.

Financial provider Aegon, which has a growing Financial Planning arm, has urged the incoming Labour government to press ahead with a pledge to set up an independent Pensions and Savings Commission and to do this within the first 100 days of taking office.

David Lawrence, the CEO of fast growing wealth manager and Financial Planner Kingswood Holdings, has quit.

UK market indices rose strongly this morning after news of the landslide Labour Party election victory - widely expected - was absorbed by analysts.

Data provider Defaqto has named the UK’s top performing Managed Portfolio Services (MPS) in its inaugural Defaqto MPS Comparator Awards.

The new awards are designed to identify “consistently strong” MPS performance based on five years of discrete risk-adjusted measures.

The Defaqto MPS Comparator, launched recently, compares like for like portfolios.

The top performers for 2024 have been named across five MPS Comparator cohorts: Defensive; Cautious; Balanced; Growth and Adventurous. The overall winners across the Comparator cohorts were Rivers, Credo, Fundhouse, Waverton and Tatton (see below).

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Each Comparator has five awards: an overall winner (the most consistent performing portfolio) and four highly commended winners (the next four most consistent performing portfolios in the respective cohort).

Only those portfolios which provided real investment performance were eligible.

The 2024 winners are:

Comparator: Defensive

Comparator: Cautious

Comparator: Balanced

Comparator: Growth

Comparator: Adventurous

Source: Defaqto 

John Milliken, CEO at Defaqto, said: “Everyone in the industry is talking about MPS, so we’re very excited to share this new insight and publicly recognise top-performing providers. With many products in the market, congratulations to the providers who have been awarded this year.”

Andy Parsons, insight manager for investments at Defaqto, said: “Our methodology is linked to the release of our MPS Comparator tool. We have computed the leading models, per peer group, on a risk adjusted, 5-year discrete net, performance basis, as at the end of March 2024. 

“The awards are at individual platform MPS portfolio level and to aid the selection process, we identified the most consistent MPS portfolios within each Comparator based on a variety of quantitative data measurements. The results were then assessed and reviewed by the Defaqto Investment Committee, and the top performers rewarded with ‘Winner’ and ‘Highly Commended’ awards.”

Defaqto’s DFM coverage reviews over 120 DFMs and around 2,700 portfolios, providing data such as performance, fees, and asset allocation. Defaqto updates MPS performance data monthly. 

MPS Comparator is available for advisers and providers and it will be available soon on Defaqto Engage, the fintech’s Financial Planning suite.

Defaqto is owned by Fintel which also owns SimplyBiz.

The Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment professional body, which awards the Certified Financial Planner designation in the UK, has appointed Jamie Lang, Chartered FCSI, as its new Isle of Man branch committee President.

New research suggests that the advice gap may have widened since the FCA’s Consumer Duty requirements arrived nearly a year ago.

The FCA has confirmed that advisers in the A.13 block will see fees rise by 9.8% for 2024/25, according to its final regulatory fee and levy rates.

Two pension adviser firms have been declared as failed by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

The FCA is to hold a livestreaming webinar event on 31 July to mark the one year anniversary of the Consumer Duty.