Charlotte Crosswell OBE

Excellent analysis that speaks to the need for regulators to shift their focus away from price and number of networks and instead look towards the value delivered to customers and economies from having robust and well invested networks capable of carrying and nurturing new services and products.

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UK Election Results: Historic Labour Landslide and What It Means for You! The Labour Party has achieved a historic landslide victory, poised to win 410 seats while the Conservatives plummet to 130, marking their worst performance ever. What does this mean for your finances and future? Discover how these changes could impact your investments and lifestyle. Watch the full video for an in-depth analysis! #UKElections #LabourLandslide #PoliticalShift #FinancialImpact #StayInformed #deVere https://lnkd.in/dqqpg_mT

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Whoever wins the General Election, capital markets and investment are going to be key to delivering their priorities given little capacity in the public purse. Investment companies are the proven bridge between investors and assets such as infrastructure and renewable energy and they can play a critical role in helping the next government achieve its ambitions for economic growth. Beyond that, as a nation, we need to save and invest more, drive better returns in our pension funds and direct more of that capital towards our domestic markets (the UK ISA was one such initiative). Investment companies are a ready made, proven (over 150 years!) solution to these challenges.

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For the marketing leading platform to address these critical requirements come talk to Fusion Risk Management. Operational Resilience is what we do. It’s all we do. #fusionrm. #opres

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I was recently asked by Bobsguide to write a piece on the role Consumer Duty plays in building trust in embedded finance. At its core, the Duty is not a novel concept, but codifying this principle into enforceable regulatory standards raised expectations for all players in the ecosystem. As Consumer Duty sets new benchmarks, could it improve confidence in embedded finance and chart a path for further growth? One of the most promising aspects of Consumer Duty lies in achieving a truly collaborative process, laying the foundations for responsible innovation. Here is my take on the topic and the importance of playing fair to win over customers: https://lnkd.in/eeWXYRaW #ConsumerDuty #Embeddedfinance"

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A step in the right direction, but c'mon...how difficult do they need to make this? The lemmings of the #UK institutional investment sector want a more globally competitive domestic market but insist on tying the hands of the boards, preventing them from competing globally. It's not that hard - The Investment Association should simply instruct these boards to find the best and most experienced talent available and provide competitive, well-aligned pay packages across both executive directors and non-executive directors. If you don't compete, you can't win. #investing #stocks #corporategovernance #shareholderactivism

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Budget Flash – Is the EIS & VCT Industry Too Complacent Regarding The Chancellor? A few weeks before the UK election in 2019, I was speaking at an Intelligent Partnership EIS Forum involving eight EIS fund managers, presenting to a group of about forty wealth manager and IFA groups. During the Q&A session, one participant asked the panel of fund managers whether they believed that the election of Jeremy Corbyn would lead to the end of EIS and VCT tax reliefs. With only one exception, they were unanimous in pouring cold water on this suggestion. Too many jobs would be lost; the UK needed investment in early-stage life sciences, fintech, blockchain technology, AI, and robotics; the creative fulcrum of entrepreneurial Britian would be sacrificed etc. All logical and well-reasoned arguments. Symvan was the exception that day and argued that these schemes would be amongst the first to go for the very simple reason that the Corbyn/McDonnell axis viewed the world through an essentially post-Marxist prism and simply saw such schemes as ‘tax breaks for rich guys.’ The private sector has little or no role in generating economic growth when you remove yourself sufficiently from reality. That intellectual depravity does not exist with the current government, but expediency potentially calls the wolf to the door nonetheless. And so Martin Vander Meyer offers a warning in a worryingly prescient article in this week’s Spectator in which he argues that, although the Chancellor has emphatically denied that she wishes to punish early-stage companies in the UK, she may have to “scrape the bottom of the bin” and punish the sector as the Treasury and the OBR have removed Labour’s delusions about what the costs of its mooted tax rises will mean for the UK economy. If the furious lobbying ahead of Wednesday’s budget has taught us anything, it is that the power of the unions is forcing the Chancellor to make sub-optimal decisions and the UK as a whole will bear the cost. Will entrepreneurial Britain pay the price? #EIS #VCT #The Spectator #Martin Vander Weyer #UK Budget

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The UK Finance Payment Markets Summary is always a good read in the summer. Two items stand out in this year's summary of UK payments in 2023: 1. Bacs Direct Credit volumes had been in gentle decline since 2015 but last year jumped 10%, having increased 3% in 2022 - the jump is highlighted in the report, but no explanation given. Is it due to increased govt benefits payments, increased use of automated payroll and invoicing software or something else? 2. Faster Payment volumes reached 4.9 billion payments in 2023 - the same summary report in 2021 predicted it would take until 2030 to reach this level. Similarly, contactless debit card volume was 15.7 billion in 2023, whereas the 2020 summary report predicted this level would be reached (almost) in 2029. I sense that the forecasts in these reports of the high growth payment methods are consistently under-estimated. Is this indicative of how the UK banking industry is consistently on the back foot when it comes to payments and payment innovation, by failing to plan sufficiently for high growth in contactless and Faster Payment volumes? Still, it is great that UK Finance makes these summary figures and their 10-year forecasts available publicly and in a consistent format going back to the Payments UK association and earlier. https://lnkd.in/gi4EiHkv #payments #paymentforecasts #contactless #UKFinance

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Another insightful piece of commentary from Hardeep Tamana. Here at Avenir Registrars Ltd, we actively seek solutions to immovable barriers and work with issuers to implement change to improve shareholder value. If you would like to hear more, do get in touch. #CorporateGovernance #InvestorRelations #ESG #ShareholderEngagement

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https://lnkd.in/eY3-AmYM will MoF walk the walk!?.. #JPY strength to play through opts. A very decent chunk of 5s and 7s UST auctions coming up, #SPX500 nearly achieved ideal correction level 4800-4900 range, mega cap earnings and PCE coming up - #highfrolonger still in play, core inflation could actually end up closer to 4.5% towards q3 2024.. QQQ ideal correction more towards 16K, the growth vs value rotation only just started #assetmanagement #qualitybalancesheets

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The Takeover Panel must go! The Takeover Code once served a purpose but now stands in the way, giving too much agency to board directors whose interests are not aligned with those of shareholders. This is one of the reasons #UK #equity #markets trade at a perennial discount to the U.S. Relax the Code, and let bids go to shareholders for votes- and you will see that more often than not, the owners want exits. This will allow for the much-needed recalibration in British equities. #investing #shareholderactivism #lse

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£150 million from the British Business Bank for #CDFIs and £4 million from JPMorganChase for capacity building! Congratulations to the #CDFI sector and Responsible Finance for working endlessly to make this happen! This will be game changing for #CDFI’s and #underestimated SMEs - two of the core markets we focus on @ Lendoe and have focused on from our inception! I look forward to what’s to come!!! Let’s go 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 #funding #underestimated #growth #responsiblefinance

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Yesterday the Bank of England MPC gave themselves the option to skip a cut in February. The market will hold onto the surprise of 3 voters calling for a cut now, in what feels like a warm up for a majority in February. But the opinion of the majority of MPC members looks cautious, and they rejected the idea that gradual cuts means once a quarter. A strong pay settlements survey and any signs from the hard data that the PMI is overplaying the growth slowdown - we think it is - and February becomes a very close call. Backloading cuts while inflation rises a little above 3% in April could look attractive to Governor Bailey and co. More in our report https://lnkd.in/gm_J4fsS and thanks to the FT for quoting our view. Bank of England keeps rates on hold as growth prospects dim

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