Wealth managers have taken on bad habits

While wealth managers fulfil a purpose, many charge too much for their services, says Merryn Somerset Webb. And the costs are seldom clear.

Financial advisers come in for a lot of stick these days. So do fund managers. Sometimes for good reason, less often not. But there is one group within the financial services industry that generally seems to pass unnoticed by those of us who make a living criticising other people.

It's the wealth managers, or discretionary fund managers. These are the people to whom you take lump sums (or to whom your independent financial adviser recommends you take lump sums) to be sensibly and profitably managed on your behalf. There are plenty of them about for the simple reason that the holy grail of all service businesses is to capture as much of each client's revenue streams as you possibly can.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.