The Lang Cat

Hello all, happy Wednesday and welcome to your Update, which will be a mercifully brief affair as we are currently in the process of finalising Everything for HomeGame 6 at Leith Theatre next week. This is full on and stressful, especially for everyone else in the team, and I want to make sure I’m not overworked so I can be there to offer encouraging words as they pull yet another late shift. I am nothing if not a Lovely Boss.

Skip to content Hello. Much has been written (or not) about AI and writing. In this industry, the mechanics of it has been largely simple: whether or not AI writing is a good or a bad thing, or whether any of it can be resisted. I’ll be quite frank, I have come across many pieces – not including LinkedIn, which is almost too ridiculous to even spend time on – that bear the hallmarks of AI, with greater and lesser (read clinical, over full stopped drivel) success.

Greetings – Mike here. Mark is up in London so I’m doing the honours today. Which is indeed fortuitous as it is time to talk Advice Gap. Our Advice Gap research has been running in various guises for over 10 years now, stretching all the way back to the OG 2016 report from the Citizens Advice Bureau. This year’s study will be the 4th edition in full on lang cat branding glory, as usual combining YouGov consumer research with the views of our adviser research panel.

Date: 7 October 2026 Venue: Leith Theatre, Leith When: 11am – 5pm Last year’s HomeGame saw us try something brave and daft called New Blood, involving live financial planning on stage with real planners and an actor, so the young’uns and those outside the industry could actually see what planning is all about. Thanks to the amazing Jenny and Nicola Ellis from Wellington Wealth and the equally amazing Kate Shaw and Rebecca Tuck from FLP it went off a treat, both in Glasgow and London.

Hello, it’s Nat here, feeling both distinctly Autumnal and that September is hurtling by at a rate of knots. Oh for the days when the South Cats among us were wondering whether we were on heatwave #6 or #7 and if our lawns would ever recover to the green and pleasant land status for which they are famed. And people say we don’t have real problems… Anyway, I digress. I am going to take this opportunity to indulge my inner regulatory geek.

We are hugely proud to have won the award for Best Initiative for Closing the Adviser Gap at the Money Marketing Awards 2026. Our New Blood events in Glasgow and London, supported by our New Blood white paper, were geared around showing not telling people about the power and appeal of financial planning careers. The judges said it was this approach in particular they wanted to recognise.

Hello. On Sunday morning I was presented with a machine. It was my Dad’s old portable typewriter. The ribbon still had some ink in it and, using his Master’s dissertation as a visual aid, he highlighted how all parts of the formatting had to be inputted manually. The keys hammer, the skip button chugs, a lovely ding sounds when you reach where you set the margins. You use a silver handle to push it back to the end of the page and with a swish and a clunk, you are back at blank paper.

Gooood lunchtime all and welcome to your Update; a small package of whimsy to distract you from whatever may be keeping you busy today for just a few minutes. The business we don’t call show appears to be stuttering back to life now after the summer, which means there’s less silly season stuff to deal with, and that is always pleasing for your Updaters. You can’t just pull this stuff out of clean air, you know. If you can find any.

Hello. Sometimes I’ll say or do something that is more than likely interpreted as slightly odd and I’ll see a look flash across someone’s face that can be interpreted as, at best, confused and. at worst, “what the hell is wrong with you?” It’s rare one single event ruins anyone. We are all, in a sense, a collection of our experiences. But we don’t have time for that so why not pick one. Let’s say Friday 10 May 2013. That was the date of my first proper gig.

Good afternoon, TCWU massive. It’s Rich Mayor here on the Update this week while Mark is not on it. I’m early training it to That London this morning after a dismal showing at the Home of Football, Fratton Park. But what better way to unfurrow my eyebrows than to think about the advised platform market instead. As you’ll have gathered from one of Mark’s recent Updates, we’ve crunched the numbers for Q2 and there is some quite interesting stuff in there.