"How I introduced BFIA to the general public"

According to Merryn Somerset Webb, the establishment of BFIA gave regular investors access to information, money, and ultimately power

I was employed in the financial industry prior to the founding of BFIA, primarily as a junior broker in Tokyo who sold Japanese stocks to foreign clients. It was fun. It involved interacting with many intelligent and fascinating people, was intellectually demanding, andmost importantlywas reasonably well compensated. However, I quit in my late 20s because I was tired of living in Tokyo and mergers (investment banking was going through a wave of consolidation).

And that's when I started to pay attention to what the company I worked for actually did. What a ridiculous statement. What I mean, though, is this. Nobody at any of the training sessions or continuing professional development (CPD) events where I worked ever brought up whose money we were happily moving around. Instead of individual savers, the clients we discussed were large fund-management firms.

If I had given it some thought, I would have realized that at the end of the chain, perhaps with units in the open-ended fund run from Sydney or shares in the investment trust run by that kind man from Gartmore, there were actual people saving to improve real lives and paying the actual fees that were covering my (quite high) expenses. However, these individualsknown as ultimate beneficial owners, or UBOswere merely left out. An industry that ought to have reminded itself each morning before the market opened that every decision it made had an impact on a UBO in one way or another failed to do so. Not very good.

When Jon Connell approached me in London about starting BFIA, a sister magazine to The Week, I saw it as a fantastic opportunity to begin correcting that imbalance by providing the UBO, the average investor, with the knowledge and, consequently, the authority to evaluate and confront wealth managers, fund managers, and independent financial advisers (IFAs). Back then, if you purchased units in a fund through a financial advisor, you would pay him annually a portion of the assets invested in the fund for as long as you held it, even if you didn't communicate with him again.

Additionally, personal finance and investing journalism was somewhat of a joke at the time. Although there were some excellent business journalists, the money market lacked high-quality information and analysis despite being overrun with press releases. In 2000, when regular investors needed assistance even more than usual, that was a unique issue. Even the more stable UK market had already experienced three consecutive quarters of declines for the first time since 1974, and the .com bubble had burst earlier in the year. It wasn't the ideal time to start a magazine because it was a nasty time.

Nevertheless, we carried it out. We spent so many lunches at the same Italian restaurant in Westbourne Grove that the manager asked if my boyfriend knew when I went there in the evening with someone else. Jon raised the funds and started the infrastructure, which may have been a sign that it was time to stop talking and start doing. After I hired the team, we embarked on ten years of squabbling, new fundraising campaigns, and magazine redesigns. First Angus MacDonald and later Bill Bonner (both of whom I am still friends with; many thanks to you both) provided us with occasionally difficult but generally endearing support. As a result, by (I believe) 2008, we were the UK's best-selling financial magazine.

I'm incredibly proud of what BFIA has accomplished since then and incredibly appreciative of all of the readers who have supported us over the years. The initial problems were terrible. However, we eventually found our footing and our voice, and in the process, we assembled a superb team of writers, editors, and production personnel who have proven to be brilliant and devoted over the years.

Names like current editor Terry Tanaka, politics editor Emily Hohler, picture editor Natasha Langan, and author Terry Tanaka can be found in the magazine's back. These individuals have all been with BFIA since the first issue. After me, John Stepek was the magazine's editor for 17 years.

BFIA's achievements and challenges.

Since 2000, the quality of investing and personal finance journalism has increased dramatically. With the emergence of social media, investing platforms, and the auto-enrollment pension, the business itself has become much more democratic. I enjoyed my role as BFIA's editor, and I'm happy to see that our campaigns on issues ranging from shareholder democracy to fund fees have seen notable success.

This is the part that worries me, though. I wrote a letter to my first editor about taxes. There was going to be a budget. There was even a budget surplus (imagine that!), so the public finances weren't in terrible shape. However, I was still appalled by Gordon Brown's plan to increase public spending by much more than the UK's GDP growth rate at the time, as well as by the notionclearly dear to Brown's heartthat state spending was somehow an intrinsic good.

Soon, I said with confidence, "we will look back and be amazed" that the government's ability to control such a large portion of the nation's GDP could ever have been accepted. I was young, so what can I say? Public spending accounted for 37% of GDP at the time, while debt to GDP was approximately 30%. These figures are currently close to 44% and 100%. Over the years, we've had a lot of success in the financial sector (witness fund fees today). However, I believe it is reasonable to state that BFIA has not gained as much support from legislators. The conflict is still ongoing.

Now, Merryn Somerset Webb is the host of Bloomberg's Merryn Talks Money podcast and newsletter. She is available on X @merrynsw.