Originally published on MoneyMarketing
11th June 2025
In this episode, Money Marketing editor Tom Browne sits down with industry veteran Roderic Rennison, founder of Catalyst Partners, to reflect on five decades in financial services.
From door-to-door life insurance in the 1970s to the digital age of advice, Rennison shares what’s changed, what hasn’t… and what he still hopes to see.
Tom: Hello, welcome to another money marketing podcast. My name is Tom Brown. I’m the editor of Money Marketing, and I’m joined once again by the founder of Catalyst Partners, Roderick Rennison, who I believe is about to celebrate a milestone birthday. Would you care to share what this birthday is?
Roderic: Well, let’s just say it’s a big one. We’ll leave it at that.
Tom: Okay, fine, fine. But it has brought out the reflective side of you in a piece that has just been published on our website about what 50 years in finance has taught you. The good, the bad, the, I was about to say ugly, the indifferent, but there are certain lessons that you were keen to impart, and you’ve broken it down as five things that have changed, five things that haven’t changed, and five things that perhaps you wish had changed.
Roderic: That’s right. So, a very, very neat little structure. I suppose to start off with the sort of the things that have changed.
Tom: I mean, given the amount of time we’re talking about here, obviously a huge amount, but what are the key things that stand out?
Roderic: Well, I think the first thing is professionalism. I started life in, dare I admit it, the early 70s. I’ll leave it as vague as that, and people can work out the rest. But when I started, I was going to go to university. I didn’t quite get there because I fell into financial services as most people did. But my training consisted in that first role I had of three days training from two very nice out of work actors, one called Vincent Ray, and I learned a script, and when I passed by being able to recite the script, I was let out and sent to knock doors starting at 5:30pm at night in Hounslow West was my first set of roads and well, I’ve never looked back or never looked forward, depending on how some people look at things.
Tom: Do you think today’s advisors could learn from that that experience?
Roderic: Well, the answer is yes and no as it is to so many questions. The yes is you learn to be resilient. You learn not to be deterred at rejection. I mean, that was one of the classic sales points that you learned. But what you’ve got now is a much more professional body of advisors who rightly have to achieve certain minimum standards in terms of examinations and competency and being measured at very regular intervals that wasn’t present when I started. What I think is lacking and is interesting. I was being told this by somebody literally last week is that he now has to, this is a particular person in a large intermediary, has to do what he terms soft skills training, where he gets now people who have got lots of knowledge technically, but not particularly strong social and interpersonal skills. So, there’s always a balance to be struck.
Tom: Yeah, there seems to be a lot more emphasis on sort of soft skills now. I wouldn’t say soft skills was something I would have associated with sales back in the back in the day, necessarily. It seemed to be far more of a sort of like hit them hard, hit them fast type thing.
Roderic: Yeah, but you do you do find some advisors now who want to impart all their knowledge, but it’s not necessarily all the knowledge a client needs. It’s the relevant knowledge. And actually, being able to do something that I still don’t, after all my many years in financial services, do particularly well on some occasions the ability to listen, to empathize, to anticipate, and to be someone that can identify with the client rather than just talking at them, talking to them. And that’s a skill set that some people have naturally, or it takes time to learn over a considerable period of time.
Tom: And you mentioned the rise of professionalism is the word you used in the sector. What do you think the tipping point was when advice started to be seen more in that light, rather than something that was more salesy?
Roderic: I think there was some efforts during the 1990s but I really think that the big milestone was the retail distribution review, which took effect on 31st December 2012. I was doing consultancy at that point, and there were a lot of organizations putting a lot of effort into it, but mainly the fear factor of worrying about how they were going to actually charge a fee for their services. This was alien because they’d been previously paid by commission. And yet the strange irony of what’s happened since as a result of RDR is that to this day, probably over 80% of all fees are facilitated through platforms. They’re not charged direct to clients, and intermediaries receive considerably more than they did as an average when RDR came into effect. And that isn’t something I think the then regulator the FSA anticipated.
Tom: I think technology, I mean, we have to mention the T word. It’s this sort of hardy perennial. I seem to have more conversations about technology than any other thing, but it’s nice to hear from your article that this conversation about changing technology is not new. Now we’re talking about AI.
Roderic: Back then you were talking about calculators and emails. I remember being absolutely bowled over three years into my career and I got my first electronic calculator. It was very badly built. It had red numerals. The cover fell off after about the first six weeks, but it roughly worked with batteries. And then we were still using faxes. And if you wanted to photocopy things, you were literally putting a single sheet and sort of burning the image. And people don’t recollect, I mean, if you’re of an age where you were born after 1980, you don’t recollect that there weren’t really emails in common use until the early 1980s. So, you know, but we all take it for granted.
Tom: We do. And you’re saying we shouldn’t take it for granted?
Roderic: Well, I, I think we shouldn’t. I mean, people moan about technology, but most of the time I think it functions pretty well. The challenge is getting to grips with the ever-faster pace of change. And everybody now talks about AI and what it will do and how it will revolutionize the profession and in certain aspects it already is making an impact. But as ever, people tend to overestimate what technology can do or the or the effectiveness of it, and it sometimes takes a little longer to successfully bed in into certain areas. But I’ve just come from a meeting this morning, and the intermediary concern is making hugely successful use of AI to cut down on time in terms of processing business and report writing and meeting notes and all of those things. Yes. I mean, they are big gains potentially.
Tom: Absolutely. I wonder if we’ll be talking about AI in the same terms. We’re talking about calculators now in another 50 years’ time.
Roderic: Well, I won’t be around a lot, but unless suddenly I get a very prolonged sort of life expectancy. But yeah, I have no doubt we’ll be talking about it, I think not in 50 years. I think we’ll be talking about it in ten years, because the pace gets faster and faster.
Tom: The thing that we still do talk about now is the fact that financial services is quite sort of male dominated still, but that is something that, you know, for all the conversations that we are having now about diversity, equality or what have you, certainly from the point of view of when you started out in the 1970s, there’s been a real sea of change there.
Roderic: Oh, there absolutely has. I remember my early years. It was completely male dominated. And even in a room today you can still find there’s quite a large majority of men in senior management positions. But and, you know, people of colour were undoubtedly discriminated against in all sorts of subtle, let alone blatant ways. But I think things are hugely better. I mean, there’s always room for improvement, but I like to think that most organisations are meritocracies. And if you’re good enough, whether you’re male or female, you get there. And if the organisations are a blocker, you move on somewhere else to achieve. And I think people who have talent can get through that, you know, cliched term glass ceiling.
Tom: I mean, in terms of the things that, moving on to the things that haven’t changed, what would be the key thing or the first thing that crops up in your mind when it comes to things that haven’t changed?
Roderic: Well, the two things which we could probably lump together are the resilience of intermediaries and the ingenuity of intermediaries. Not all necessarily, but despite all the doom and gloom about the end of the intermediary or the end of the IFA, I mean, there was a stage, wasn’t there? Perhaps 10 or 15 years ago where everybody thought the market was going to go tide in the days of, you know, the IFA, as they were called, now called financial planners more commonly were numbered, but that hasn’t materialised. And I talked to people I’ve grown up with through the decades and, you know, they’ve been very successful, but they’ve also not apart from being resilient, they’ve also been able to take advantage in many instances of changing circumstances to make the most of the particular market, not in an exploitative way where it’s to the detriment of clients, but seeing opportunities and realising them. And I think that will continue to be the case. I mean, at the moment, for example, people are saying, oh gosh, you know, there’s going to be fewer intermediaries, and we haven’t got enough people coming through. That’s true to some extent. But what people underestimate, I think, is the number of new firms being set up. And, you know, people as a result of consolidation, which we haven’t mentioned, but, you know, no conversation is complete without doing so. Consolidation has led to quite a lot of advisers feeling where they haven’t been partied to the consideration that’s paid. And they haven’t been perhaps a member of the board or the shareholder or partner, you know, they’ve decided to go somewhere else. And there’s been a large number of new firms set up by advisers who feel the need to go out in their own and demonstrate what they can do. And that, I think, is going to be a continuing trend in the coming years.
Tom: I was looking back in our archive just recently and consolidation, probably in the last year or so, is probably the number three topic we’ve most spotlighted. And the other two are pensions and of course, the next thing we’re going to talk about, which is regulation. I don’t want to delve into the alphabet soup of the organisations, but SIB, FSA and now the FCA grumbling about regulatory oversight is another constant.
Roderic: No conference with breakout sessions would be complete where there is a regulatory compliance or regulatory overlay without there being people expressing very strong views. And I entirely go along with the general premise that regulation isn’t perfect, but I suggest, with the benefit of some hindsight, that it’s very, very much better than it was in the past. And people need to be very careful what they wish for if they say the STA, you know, we shouldn’t have them or they’re overbearing or they do this, they do that. They’re not perfect by any matter of means but at the moment they appear based on the road shows they’re doing, to be very much in a much more listening mode. The proof of the pudding is, of course, always in what changes as a result, and there have been certain lapses along the way with any regulator. And, you know, we don’t need to go into those today, but I think my view is that regulation is a fact of life. You treat the regulator with respect. You do what you’re asked to do. And if you’re not sure about things, you take external advice from a regulatory specialist to ensure that you stay on the right side of the regulation at all times. And for people who do that generally, I don’t think they have a lot to fear from regulation. If you’re a sole practitioner, you’re trading on your own, then yes, you need to take a choice. Do you want to remain directly authorised to gain more by perhaps becoming a member of a network with more support? All of those are individual decisions based on particular circumstances and your attitude towards life, and what matters to you and what doesn’t.
Tom: Yeah, it’s certainly a conversation that has ramped up since the consumer duty and will no doubt continue when it comes to things like advice, guidance. I’m talking to older advisers. A lot of them, when I’ve spoken to them, have said, well, it’s the burden of regulation that means that, you know, I want to sell up and move on and retire. Which brings me to the next point about succession, which I know is a topic that interests you.
Roderic: Well, it does, because it’s where I spent my time with my three partners in Catalyst. And, you know, we very much start from the premise that if people want to talk about their succession, we don’t go in with predetermined ideas about what they want to do, the timescale, whether they, you know, they’re definitely going to want to sell as opposed to a management buyout or an employee ownership trust or perhaps family succession. What we want to do is to understand what actually matters to them, and then we can tell them what we think is practical and what’s achievable based on their circumstances. But it does still grieve me somewhat where I meet intermediaries who are very, very unhappy with the outcome of a sale they’ve been through.
Tom: Why do you think so many people still get it wrong?
Roderic: Well, there is a classic statistic quoted which is based on, I think, Institute of Directors statistics and also perhaps even Harvard, where probably somewhere between 60 and 70% of all transactions involving the sale of a business don’t deliver either value to the acquirer or lead to dissatisfaction of the seller. And I think the main reasons are that the buyer doesn’t do the right due diligence on the seller and hasn’t perhaps got a defined strategy. The other big reason is they don’t have the resources to integrate the business well, which is a real, you know, it’s relatively easy to buy a business, but to integrate it successfully where all parties, that’s the clients, the staff and the buyer and seller are all happy at the end of it. It’s a much bigger challenge. And I think for sellers, the biggest reason why some sales don’t succeed is they don’t take professional advice. They unfortunately, perhaps get someone who just rings them up one day and says, “I’d like to make an offer for your business.” Or maybe someone says, “I know someone who wants to buy your business”, and they don’t talk to others. They don’t do enough diligence on the business they’re buying. And above all, the other big reason why sellers aren’t happy is they haven’t thought sufficiently about what life looks like after the sale. Do they want to stay on and advise? Do they want to retire? They say they want to retire, but do they know what they want to do in retirement? And two years in, they’ve been on three cruises. They’ve been on four long hauls. They’ve blown a bit of money. Had quite a good fun time. Well, it is great fun. But then, you know, you’re still let’s say you’re 67 years of age and you’re still active and, you know, do you have hobbies that you’ve got lined up? And dare I ask the question? Does your spouse or partner value you being in the house all day? These are things that need to be planned and considered, and unfortunately, quite a number of individuals don’t. And another anecdotal statistic I mean, Catalyst probably works almost exclusively by referral or introduction and upwards of probably 35, nearly 40% of all the new inquiries we receive are in relation to firms that have attempted to sell at least or do a transaction with perhaps an MBO once or more unsuccessfully. And, you know, that’s really because there hasn’t been that detailed preparation and professional advice taken and, you know, that self-serving, perhaps, but that’s our experience.
Tom: Yeah. Moving on to the final furlong, the five things that I wish I had changed. Very interesting. Your first thing that you mentioned is a unified trade body with the whole people will be familiar with the PFS CI in Brogio, which is still rumbling on. Do you, I mean, you say there’s still time to put that right, to stop people operating in silos. That seems to be a very difficult thing to solve or to get right.
Roderic: Well, I think a lot of water’s got under the bridge and I say there’s still time. That may be wishful thinking on my part, but I was a board member many moons ago of SOFA, and it absorbed the Life Insurance Association, the LIA, another great acronym back in the day. And there were provisional talks with, what was then the Institute of Financial Planning, before that went into CISI, the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investments. And that was a missed opportunity because you talk to most intermediaries, what they want is an organisation that they can feel comfortable being part of, that provides their statement of professional standing, that provides their CPD and represents them. And at the moment, however you look at it, you have no single body that does that effectively. And I believe that’s really important in terms of dealing effectively and having a constructive engagement with the FCA. Now the FCA will talk to PFS, they’ll talk to CISI, they’ll talk to London Institute of Banking and Finance and others. But it just seems to me to be a wasted opportunity when you look at other professions, and they’ve just got a much more joined up and unified approach in their dealings with regulators and the public. And I say there’s still time, you know, it would be great. The strange irony is I don’t know whether you know this, Tom, but the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investments and the CI are in the same building on the same floor.
Tom: I did know I didn’t know they were on the same floor.
Roderic: On the opposite side, literally on the opposite side of the lift. And I’m thinking, you know. Come on. Really? But, you know, unfortunately, that I’ll be told there’s all sorts of practical reasons and there’s vanity and there’s egos and old traditions die hard. But I think it would be really, really good if there was encouragement to get to a single body.
Tom: No, it certainly feels like a missed opportunity. I agree, one thing that we’re very familiar with in the media is the role of social media and the somewhat hostile cauldron that can that can emerge from that for that. Is that something? Because, I mean, people have been talking about, you know, the siloed nature of social media, how polarized it is, how toxic it is. Do you get a sense that that’s getting better or worse?
Roderic: I don’t think it’s getting any worse. What I do think is that, as appears in the article, people who occasionally get a bit ahead of themselves or inebriated on a Saturday night can make comments on social media, which can’t be taken back. And the thing to realise from where I sit with the work I’m doing is that acquirers are more searching in their diligence than they used to be. And a number do pay attention to starting with what does your website look like? What does your comments you make on your website in terms of your blogs? And then they move on to social media, whether that’s LinkedIn or X or whatever. And there have been a couple of instances in my recent past where certain buyers have noticed comments of perhaps a blunt nature made by certain sellers or vendors, which, you know, aren’t necessarily the views that they hold and that can sometimes impact on an acquirers wish to go forward with discussions. So, I think it’s always being considered and careful in what one says.
Tom: Yes. I think it’s very easy to sort of react short term in the moment, isn’t it? And in the past, there wouldn’t be anywhere. There would have been no sort of like machine to react to that at all.
Roderic: Well, you’d have had to make an effort in the sense that you’d have written to your paper. So, you know, something would have appeared in the Signs of Telegraph, sir, and you’d have had to write that note. But, I mean, it’s a great piece of advice, and it still holds good today, and I don’t always follow it myself. So, forgive me if I’m, my three partners will tell me I’m a hypocrite and the next time I see them, but people would do well with some things they want to write to. Perhaps just put it in the outbox or the draft box and, you know, postdate, the timing, at least for 24 hours, just to reflect and come back and read it and say, is it still relevant? Is it still is it? Are those the words that I want to use? Are they the best form of words? Is that the impact I want to have? But human nature being what it is, we sometimes are impetuous and yes, you know, act first and think later.
Tom: Yes, we’ve got two ears and one mouth, as my mum used to say to wit your listening to talking ratio, which you also mention. You think you’ve improved on that too?
Roderic: Well, that’s for others to judge. It has improved. But I am not perfect. I can still talk over people on occasions. On occasions, you know, a couple of my partners do say you’re interrupting and I do. And it’s when I get passionate about something that’s an excuse. It is an excuse. And yes, we always need as individuals to strive to be better and recognise some of our failings or foibles. And, you know, it’s work in progress.
Tom: And to end, it’s interesting that you’ve put down what you describe as a pet peeve. Fast, faster to travel. You telling us earlier that you got here no trouble at all today, but that’s not that’s not a typical experience.
Roderic: Well, it’s an experience that happens probably over half the time, but train travel is no is no faster than it used to be. And indeed, I think it’s probably slightly worse than it used to be. And I think you look at the road network in this country and to say it’s clogged, I think would be a fair description, particularly in parts of the Southeast and probably in other parts. And I think you recognise that more when you go abroad, and maybe you see other countries through rose tinted spectacles. But I was in Ireland over the weekend at a cousin’s wedding, and they’ve got a tremendous network. Who knows? Now, in fairness, actually, the road was fairly clogged coming out of Dublin on Friday, but that was because of a particular accident, which was unusual, but, you know, I’ve been I’ve been lucky enough to go to Australia at the end of last year and their network was fantastic. And I just think we I agree with whoever thinks that we should be able to legislate more effectively for infrastructure and change because it’s necessary. I mean, we’ve got some great successes, the Elizabeth line and various other things, but they do seem to take a long time to come.
Tom: A long time ago, incredibly overbudget, and we won’t mention HS2.
Roderic: Well, no, I wouldn’t dream of going there. I don’t profess to know enough about it.
Tom: So, you end with a sort of rhetorical question. Five decades in, how do I feel? How do you feel?
Roderic: Well, as I put in the article, I still love working. My wife, very long suffering of over 40 years, says, you know, why do you do it? And the answer is, because I still enjoy it. I still get a buzz out of meeting new people. I get a buzz out of, you know, being faced with challenges. I like the interaction with people and the other thing I’m still learning is I’m not discerning enough. I probably still take too much on and should be a little bit more selective, but that’s just me. But, you know, I, I think I’ve got something still to give back in terms of my experience, but that’s for others to judge.
Tom: Well, thank you very much for sharing your decades worth of wisdom, Roderic. It’s been a pleasure.
Roderic: Well, wisdom maybe. Perhaps is a better word. Thank you, thank you. I’ve enjoyed it. Thanks, Tom.
Roderic Rennison is a founding partner of Catalyst Partners