This is a major UK life and retirement provider with a clear wish to broaden its investment proposition. Two things were driving the hire.
The first was defence. Consumer Duty means an investment proposition has to be properly researched and has to perform for the clients relying on it, and many of them are taking an income. The second was growth. The proposition is now competing against other multi-asset and MPS solutions, so it needed a meaningful upgrade. There's also an appetite to do more in retirement, whether that's built in-house or alongside partners.
What the search showed about the market
Bigger operators need broader offerings to win business now. The national networks and consolidators taking the big flows run centralised investment propositions, and getting onto one takes more than a single good fund.
The role
Senior, and very cross-functional. The role works across distribution, marketing, product build, and legal and regulatory, and most of what they achieve happens through other people, so leadership was a big part of the brief.
They also need a sharp sense of what an adviser firm actually needs built. That means time with advisers and, sometimes, with advisers' clients. On top of that, they own every communication to the market and to advisory clients.
How I mapped it
At direct competitors, the strongest people weren't working only in retail advice. Many now cover workplace and direct-to-consumer as well, so on paper this role looked narrower to them, even with the responsibility attached.
At asset managers, people with the right investment authority and acumen often hadn't dealt mainly with retail advisers. They've only worked that way since the national consolidators grew, and even then more institutionally, so the product knowledge wasn't always there.
At platforms, the people who run proposition don't usually design an investment solution end to end. They orchestrate. They tell the partners who build it what they need, and the design responsibility sits with those partners.
So the pool was small. The surprise was where a good number of strong candidates came from: the national network consolidators building their own investment solutions. The people doing that building, often with asset management behind them, turned out to be a very good fit.
Where it stands
This is a retained search, and it's at shortlist stage.
What it's taught me so far
The best-qualified person for a proposition role isn't always where you'd first look. Sometimes they're on the other side of the table, building the thing your client is trying to sell into.