The success of a mutual fund has, historically, relied on three facets — good performance, confidence/trust in the asset management firm, and strong and effective distribution -because, even if you are the best fund manager in the world, if no one has heard of you then it is tough to attract assets to manage. The performance takes time and can be very fickle, as can be seen by the fact that active funds typically underperform the indices that they are supposed to beat. Furthermore, in the past, large banks and insurance companies have had a captive investor- base or have been able to afford to pay to advertise nationally and, in some cases, globally, which has helped them funnel assets into their funds. However, confidence and trust need to be earnt as, after all, why would investors give their savings to an organisation which they did not trust? The regulators recognise this, and one of their main objectives is to ensure that confidence in the financial system is maintained with only honest and trustworthy individuals and organisations being permitted to be regulated and sell financial products. Unsurprisingly, this is why there is a prodigious amount of attention being paid to Neil Woodford, the UK-based disgraced fund manager who is alleged to have ‘broken the rules’ and invested too much into unquoted equities. The fallout of Woodford’s actions continues since one of the UK’s biggest financial advisors and ‘darling’ of many of the UK’s national press, Hargreaves Lansdown, is now being sued.The Woodford fiasco could have been averted had his fund been subject to the rigor and controls required for being on a Blockchain-powered platform, whereby making the fund’s holdings transparent for all to see. Smart contracts could have been employed to automatically inform the regulator, administrator, auditors, custodians, financial advisors,…