What's in a name? The dangers of 'the bond labelling problem'

How to avoid using unnecessary terms

The investment industry is rife with labels that can be misleading to an investor, or just plain inappropriate, writes Peter Askew, CEO of T. Bailey.

Much of this is to do with selling products typically built for institutional investors and measured against an index.  So, as wealth managers, it is important to step back for a minute and consider the value or relevance of an index to an individual investor. Faced with thousands of products offering exposures to geographical equities and various forms of fixed income, individual investors have opted increasingly for mixed asset offerings where the asset allocation decision has already been made.   Evidence of this trend can be seen in the monthly retail flows published by the Inv...