Financial adviser Alan Steel, who passed away on Wednesday September 15, aged 74, was an extraordinary individual.
During his 46 years at the helm of Alan Steel Asset Management, he did more to raise the reputation of the financial services industry than any bloated regulator could ever achieve in 100 years of pontificating.
He was a force of nature, a formidable human being. God, he will be missed.
I first met Alan in the early 1990s when I was personal finance editor at The Sunday Telegraph. I was introduced to him by John Allison, a brilliant marketing individual (a ‘creative’), whose lunchtime company I thoroughly enjoyed. Yes, more liquid than pie and mash, but always informative and entertaining.
He was a force of nature, a formidable human being. God, he will be missed.John had (and still has) a wonderful financial brain and knew me and Alan would be a match made in heaven.
"Boy, he’s got some stories to tell you," he informed me as a cork was pulled from another bottle of crisp Viognier.
He was right. Alan came down to see me from his bolthole in Linlithgow. I was instantly hooked. He was charismatic (and good-looking), forthright, full of stories and wasn’t frightened to pull his punches. He was a breath of fresh air: someone who despised financial wrongdoing. A perfect marriage. Like John, he also liked a drink (Rioja in particular), which endeared him to me even more.
He proceeded to feed me a string of stories over the next couple of years that lifted the personal finance pages I was putting together from the mundane to the near sublime. He helped expose a string of anti-consumer practices that the pensions industry was committing on policyholders.
He also assisted me in exposing the scandal that lay beneath the financial behemoth that was Equitable Life. He simply did not believe that its business model was sustainable – and he said so in the pages of The Sunday Telegraph.
Equitable Life came crashing down on him, threatening to put him out of business unless he shut up – it didn’t pursue The Sunday Telegraph because we had far more financial muscle to fight its bullying. Of course, Alan was right because Equitable Life eventually went into financial meltdown in late 2000.
Our relationship was two-way: he helped me write some award winning articles, and he also gained some new clients (rich ones) as readers sought his advice. When I joined The Mail on Sunday, our ‘marriage’ blossomed.
Trouble in paradise
Yet it wasn’t always hugs and kisses. We would occasionally fall out if I didn’t use one of the ideas Alan pushed my way. Alan was convinced that every idea he came up with was front page news. That was his way: he had incredible self-belief.
It’s why he was such a successful business person. It’s why he was a brilliant, confident speaker, full of wit and funny anecdotes. It’s also why he was a super financial columnist.
He would have been a formidable full-time journalist, although I am not sure he would have liked reporting to an editor telling him what to do.
Sadly, the Woodford debacle did it for us. We held opposing views on Woodford’s culpability in the wake of the suspension of the Woodford Equity Income fund in May 2019. He defended Woodford, I didn’t.
When I didn’t run some of the comments he made supporting Woodford, it was the beginning of the end. Weeks later, he texted me to say our relationship was over and that he would never speak to me again. He was true to his word (and I knew he would be).
It doesn’t detract from my view of Alan. No way. He was a brilliant ambassador for the financial adviser community. Of course, he was interested in building a successful business – and loved getting new clients – but he always put consumers first. He was a consumer champion before the term was invented.
A very kind individual
But there were other aspects to Alan that swept me away. Underneath the self-confident exterior lay a very kind individual. When my dad was about to retire from a lifetime spent as a commercial salesman, Alan sorted out his pension (dad was always self-employed).
He used the open market option to secure dad a higher lifetime income. More importantly, he ensured the annuity would not die with dad, but continue at half rate in the event of his death. For more than four years, mum has benefited from Alan’s financial acumen. Like me, she is devastated by Alan’s death (she had a little bit of a crush on him).
Alan was also kind to me. He would always support my charity raising endeavours with generous donations. Brathay Trust, in particular, benefited from his kindness. He also arranged for me to travel up to Scotland and deliver a speech at a dinner to celebrate his business’s 40th anniversary.
Although a fellow journalist told me later that he had been Alan’s first choice but couldn’t do it – but I wasn’t that bothered. I was still honoured to be asked. For the record, I don’t think Alan really listened to my words. I suspect he believed he could have delivered a better speech himself, and he’s right. He was a born raconteur, I am not.
In the end, Alan’s bloody-mindedness did for him. He was an anti-vaccine supporter and Covid-19 sadly took his life.
But what a life, what an individual. God doesn’t make many like Alan. I will miss him as will many in the financial services sector. He was a beacon in an industry not known for its shining lights.
I trust he is up there somewhere right now beyond the clouds, sipping on a Rioja and playing some of the music he loved. He will never be forgotten.
Jeff Prestridge is personal finance editor of the Mail on Sunday
