The "Big Bang" brought about modernisation, reduced red tape, broke down international trade barriers and ushered in an age where financial transactions could be completed at the touch of a button.
It also unleashed the forces of capitalism, created a web of financial interdependency and counterparty risk and fuelled the debt culture to hitherto unimagined proportions.
If you were retelling the story of the 2007 global financial crisis, then your account would perhaps reference the Big Bang if you wanted to accurately describe when things first started to really get out of hand.
A quarter of a century later, the UK retail investment market is facing its own Big Bang moment, in the form of the Retail Distribution Review (RDR).
RDR is expected to have profound consequences for the investment management industry, for product providers, financial advisers and investors. But what exactly are the likely implications for each of these groups?
The product providers
A "me too" approach to product development, whereby an investment company offers one or more of every type of fund just to keep up with its competitors, will no longer work.
Differentiation and innovation, which are largely absent from the commoditised mainstream investment market, will be vital.
Profit margins will be coming down for all product providers, driven by fierce competition and increased pricing pressure from distributors and investors.
This is great news for consumers, but a bloated investment industry is going to have to work much harder for its share of a dwindling pool of assets.
The pursuit of client assets looks set to become increasingly frantic for investment houses that rely on active fund management, as the growing popularity of passive solutions continues to fracture the market.
But the active versus passive debate should not be an "either/or" argument and there is room for both within investor portfolios.
Where it is used appropriately, the benefits of active management should still ultimately outweigh the costs.
Active fund management could therefore truly thrive in the niche areas where markets are considered less efficient (smaller companies, emerging markets, alternative strategies etc) and where consumer tolerance of higher prices, in exchange for higher returns, will be greatest.
The advisers
The adviser community has a job on its hands given that a fee-based advice model is going to be: unsustainable for those that have not developed a service-led proposition; unpalatable for the majority of existing clients; and cost-prohibitive for many consumers who have never visited an adviser but had been considering it.
Many advisory businesses will become restricted in the face of the more stringent RDR requirements of independent advice.
But a lot of larger advisory businesses are realising that taking the restricted route could prove to be a form of regulatory insurance, within which they will avoid the burden of having to maintain independence and will also be able to club together for greater bargaining power.
Product providers, for their part, are already looking for ways in which they can prevent large distributors from demanding a better deal from new share classes.
It could all become attritional rather quickly. The fund managers with the deepest pockets will drive for more direct-to-consumer market share, typically via execution-only in order to steer clear of the over-regulated advisory route.
The consumers
The most conspicuous factors for RDR involve pushing for better consumer outcomes and a fairer distribution market for investments.
Consumer empowerment is also an overlying trend. Much like other industries, an increase in information for consumers, partly driven by the internet and financial education efforts, is moving the industry towards greater transparency of cost and appreciation of value.
Perhaps the most significant potential unintended consequence of RDR will be the number of people taken out of the market for advice.
As we have discussed, the fee-based structure for financial advice will be unpalatable for many people, specifically those infrequent seekers of advice who were under the impression that commission-based products come with "free" advice.
Many lower-end clients, used to getting such services without a direct cost implication, will find financial advice too cost-prohibitive.
Ironically, those that do actively seek advice may find themselves shunned by advisers who see them as unprofitable and too costly to service in their post-RDR model.
Even the high street banks could opt to steer clear of this segment, viewing them as too high risk for too little reward.
Who will emerge as winners?
If the first Big Bang was driven by the twin trends of modernisation and globalisation, expect the RDR Big Bang to be driven by economies of scale.
The investment companies that do well will likely be those that are big enough to withstand the pricing pressure of RDR and that can exploit direct-to-consumer opportunities, or the (probably much smaller) businesses that have a foothold in a niche market segment that will allow them to grow organically by being highly targeted.
The big platforms will become bigger as smaller players fall away (or get bought), the greater resources and scale benefits of the larger platforms also put them at an advantage in the face of market changes and pricing pressure.
Expect to see some advisory businesses leaving the market (typically smaller businesses where the principals are close to retirement age).
However, the larger networks and nationals that can manage the transition to an efficient restricted advice model (possibly alongside an independent proposition) will do well.
Similarly, wealth managers large enough to take advantage of the post-RDR world should be able to demonstrate to high net worth clients the inherent benefits of holistic services that are worth paying for.
Expect these wealth managers to continue to provide advice but also begin manufacturing their own investment products.
Just as with the last Big Bang, RDR promises to drag an old fashioned industry kicking and screaming into the future.
But good intentions are not enough and investment managers and advisers will have to adapt or risk falling by the wayside.
Ultimately though, at the bottom of the food chain will be those consumers considered outside the reach of financial advice, with too little money to invest and who cannot be persuaded that the value of financial advice should outweigh its costs.
Although we can hope that RDR will ultimately prove to be a force for good, it will certainly create winners and losers, and it remains to be seen on which side most consumers are likely to end up.
Mark Soonaye is product director at Octopus Investments. The views expressed here are his own.