Inside Money: So long, readers

Specialist finance blog Inside Money is on the way out today.

David Chaplin is the editor of financial services industry website Investment News.

After 82 production months, and almost seven years to the day since it first appeared in the digital Herald, specialist finance blog Inside Money is on the way out today.

By my calculations, over that period I've produced roughly 230,000 words for the column - most of them approximately relating to the financial services industry.

Following an independent review of the historical content, I've concluded there's nothing else left to write about this particular industry ever again.

... that, and budget cuts at the Herald may have played a part in ending the Inside Money run.

Over its seven years, the column explored a lot of ground in, sometimes bizarre, places but there were probably a few recurring themes.

The full independent review, once it's published (date TBC), will discuss these themes in detail. But if there's one point to conclude from those 230,000 words, it's that the financial services world is encroaching more than ever into the ordinary lives of individuals.

Perhaps the best example, from a New Zealand perspective, is the rise of KiwiSaver, which coincided almost exactly with the lifetime of this column. While it might be viewed as a government-backed savings scheme, KiwiSaver is actually more about shifting responsibility for financial decisions from the state (and employers) onto individuals - 2.56 million of them to date.

Regular citizens, then, have a real incentive to understand at least the basic concepts that underpin the chatter of industry experts, financial salesmen, newspaper columnists: it's not so hard, they're only human (some of them).

Many thanks to Chris D at the Herald for his support over the years, and my regular, wise reader (you know who you are, Owl): it's been niche.