Financial Adviser was born in the aftermath of Big Bang, on April 30, 1987.
We have a copy of our first-ever front page, framed and on the walls of our office in Bracken House.
The paper spoke to a rising cohort of entrepreneurial, independent financial advisers, moving out of the world of insurance company sales and into direct advice to clients.
Regulation, too, reared its head. At one time there were so many different regulatory bodies it felt as if we were drowning in acronym soup.
That same entrepreneurial spirit prevailed nevertheless.
But post-depolarisation, A-Day, the retail distribution review, pension freedoms and the like, here we are once again, with the consumer duty obligations knocking at our door.
How entrepreneurial do people feel now?
I have not spoken with an adviser who disagrees with consumer duty's overall aim of making sure that everything is being done with the customer's best possible financial outcome as the goal.
But I have spoken with advisers who fear this will crush the entrepreneurial spirit in a way that even the RDR, with its abolition of commission-based payments on investment products, did not.
This fear is based partly on the working environment for newcomers and those leaving behind an employed role to become directly authorised.
They are starting to go it alone at a time when professional indemnity insurance is operating in an almost cabalistic fashion, setting premiums at eye-watering prices.
Likewise, regulatory costs and charges have been rising, as reported by FTAdviser, with the Financial Services Compensation Scheme taking an ever-larger piece of the adviser's profit pie.
Add to this the cost-of-living crisis, rising business rents and insurances, salaries and staff costs, and it is unsurprising many advisers have spoken to me of their concern this all makes for a hard market for newcomers.
The other big fear factor, of course, is consumer duty, and the knowledge that just to get through the FCA's gatekeepers, firms seeking authorisation will have to map out exactly what they plan to do to be profitable enough to comply with capital adequacy expectations, while presenting ongoing fair value assessment proposals.
Oh, and of course the FCA will be expecting firms not to be making profits off the backs of clients in terms of charges.
Fair warning
Earlier this year, in a podcast from the regulator, Alex MacDermott, a technical specialist in the FCA’s authorisations division said while the duty was a "big change" in regulation, "it doesn't change the standards that we assess firms against at the gateway.
"So, the threshold conditions, the requirements for registration, they don't change.
"Firms still need to show us that they've got appropriate financial and non-financial resources, they still need to show that they can run the business in a sound and prudent manner and that they're suitable."
