I'm joined again by Bob Quinn, Independent Financial Advisor, who we know as The Investor's Advocate. Bob deals with retail investors on a daily basis. As most of us in the industry will never meet our funds' investors in person, I love the insights that Bob gives about the priorities and concerns of the average retail investor.

In this episode, I was keen to find out what retail investors' views are on fees and expenses and value for money. This topic is high on the regulator's agenda - but what about the investor's agenda? I was very surprised by what Bob had to say on that front!

In this episode, my guest is John Phinney who is the Chairman and Co-President at Convergence Inc. John's mission is to help investors - not by looking at the markets and investment performance - but by performing in-depth analysis on the investment advisors those investors are appointing.

John shares his insights on the flags he is looking for that point to an investment advisor being an outlier when compared to its peers (and his analysis covers 37,000 investment advisors!!). With regulators ever more concerned about how fund mancos supervise their delegate investment managers, this podcast is a great listen for anyone looking for insights on how to do that job better.

There is an increasing focus by regulators on how well (or otherwise) fund mancos are overseeing their delegate investment managers. Regulators expect fund mancos to be intrusive and challenging - but this can be difficult to do that if the fund manco's only source of data is the investment manager itself. And there is a risk associated with relying on this data when the investment manager has a conflict of interest to present the data in a certain way.

Key takeaway: it is important for fund mancos to identify and use additional sources of information, such as regulatory returns, public statements and data analytics providers, to support their oversight function. This is an emerging good practice at this stage but will be come the norm (and the benchmark) in the medium term. Don't get left behind!

Connect with John Phinney

For this episode of the Aquest Podcast, I am delighted to be joined by Bob Quinn from The Money Advisers as we take a look into the Investor's Perspective. We talked about what he does, how he engages with clients, when he does a suitability assessment and many more. We also took some time to talk about whether Australian Gold Mines are a good home for your hard earned cash.

Connect with Bob Quinn

Adrian Whelan shares that moment he realized he was proud to be from Finglas, inside an emotive discussion exploring; class, education, bias, and his role in the Protect Accent Campaign, with co-hosts Shannon Eastman and Daniel Lawlor. www.Protect-Accent.com

Linkedin for Adrian

We are joined by Martina Kelly, Director of Funds at the Institute of Banking as she recalls how different the financial industry was back then. How has the financial industry changed, and the evolution of regulatory compliance. What were some of the challenges she faced back then and what's the direction the funds industry is going in now.

The Aquest Podcast Perspectives on Blockchain & Crypto with Andrew Tzialli