Jupiter chief executive Maarten Slendebroek is stepping down from the role, with former Janus Henderson co-chief executive Andrew Formica due to take on the position. Slendebroek, who has been Jupiter’s chief executive since 2014, will stay with Jupiter until 1 May after signing a settlement agreement yesterday which will see him awarded a £1m bonus […]
St James’s Place has named Emma Hunt as head of responsible investing in a bid to expand its responsible investment offering. In a statement the company says the hire is part of a strategy to engage more of its partners and clients in its responsible investment work and enhance SJP’s stewardship capabilities. The wealth manager […]
Zurich has added a junior Isa and pension to its platform as part of a wider ‘cradle to grave’ intergenerational planning solution. The Isa can be opened on behalf of a child while a junior retirement account option allows guardians and parents to contribute up to the £2,880 annual limit yearly. Charges for the products […]
Beaufort Financial’s Nottingham director Gurmit Nahal on why she outsources investment management and how it enables her to focus on holistic financial planning and strategic oversight of portfolios Do you take care of your investment management in-house, outsource it to a third party or combine both approaches? Why do you do it that way?We outsource […]
Ahead of her appearance at Money Marketing’s flagship conference, Money Marketing Interactive this April, CISI award winner Rebecca Aldridge looks at making numbers more exciting and getting advisers and fund managers on the same page What one word or phrase do you think sums up the state of the financial planning profession today? Over-doing disclosure. Well-intentioned […]
Nutmeg has secured £45m in the latest funding round led by Goldman Sachs and Convoy in the biggest robo-adviser funding round in Europe. The company will use the backing for its expansion to international market this year. Nutmeg has received £116 million in investment since launch. The company said the funding would be used for […]
DWP report backs up the theory that inertia is strong enough to overcome the impact on pay of increasing contributions Last year was full of developments in the pensions world. Defined benefit consolidation, collective defined contribution schemes and the pension dashboards were all the subject of government consultation and policy development. But perhaps the most […]
The FCA’s website and Unbiased have been criticised as unhelpful in a major review of the communications received by members of British Steel Pension Scheme The review, commissioned by the Pensions Regulator and led by former Money Advice Service boss chief executive Caroline Rookes has been published today. It looks into communications and support provided […]
Obtaining cover for people with medical issues can be difficult, so is it best left to the specialists? Protecting a client’s income is viewed by many advisers as the foundation upon which other aspects of financial planning are built. However, for clients with pre-existing health conditions, obtaining cover may not be that easy. Depending on […]
An IFA has been instructed to pay up to £150,000 in compensation for the advice it gave a client to transfer their pension into an unregulated overseas property development. In the upheld Financial Ombudsman Service ruling Mrs P complained about the advice she was given by Professional Intermediary Introducers Limited to invest around 90 per […]
Jane Smith Financial Planning director on managing her goals and developing a guidance service for clients Financial planners help clients achieve what they want from life and adapt the course of that journey when necessary. But how often do they follow their own advice when it comes to their business and personal objectives? Jane Smith […]
For generations, life expectancy has been steadily increasing, with more and more people now likely to live to 100. Scottish Widows’ pension expert Robert Cochran tackles this longevity landscape with economist and co-author of the book ‘The 100-Year Life’, Andrew Scott, in episode one of Scottish Widows’ new podcast series – “The Future of Financial Planning”. Click […]
We’re all living longer – half the future generation born after 2036 is expected to live to 100*. But despite more of us saving for our retirement, and from a younger age, there’s still a lot of work to do if we want our time in retirement to be both financially and physically healthy – […]
Openwork has announced it has developed its own lifetime mortgage product, and that it is now available through a pilot scheme. The financial advice network details that its monthly income drawdown offering is available through an exclusive partnership with Canada Life, which bought Retirement Advantage in January last year. It says the product has been designed […]
A volatile market in the fourth quarter of last year saw platform Transact’s funds under direction dip by 4.4 per cent to £32bn, latest results show. An update from parent Integrafin this morning sounds a positive note, however, that funds fell by less than major indices like the FTSE All Share and MSCI World, which […]
Ahead of his appearance at Money Marketing’s flagship conference, Money Marketing Interactive, this April, Helm Godfrey chairman Danby Bloch looks at getting graduates into advice and making adviser the ‘go-to gurus’ of finance What should we be doing to get more new advisers into the profession? There’s no quick fix, but there are lots of […]
An Essex man has been jailed for eight years after mis-selling carbon credits to 130 victims in 2012 and 2013 and using the funds to purchase luxury items for himself. City of London Police took on the case from Essex Police, sentencing Sami Raja of Grays, Essex in Southwark Crown Court on Friday. Raja was […]
People need to take care to protect their pension pots from potential investment scammers and negligent trustees, the Insolvency Service has warned. In a statement today, the IS says the ban against cold-calling should not mean investors relax their views on scammers. Consumer minister Kelly Tolhurst says: “If you think you might have been a […]
An unauthorised company calling itself Vanguard Investments is trying to scam investors, the FCA has warned. The authorised asset manager Vanguard Investments UK is part of Vanguard group, one of the largest fund managers in the world with around $5.1trn of assets under management. The cloned firm was listing a similar physical address to that […]
What’s the news in protection? On the surface you could be forgiven for thinking there isn’t anything new, that protection is still generally being overlooked and undervalued. Figures from Royal London’s State of the Protection Nation Report show that just 35% of people have life insurance, 12% have critical illness cover and 9% have income […]
National advice firm and investment manager Lighthouse Group has decided to exit the master trust market amid fears incoming regulation would make operating the auto-enrolment service too costly. Lighthouse announced today it will no longer provide financial support to its corporate pensions trust to enable it to apply for master trust authorisation. Following a review […]
Consolidator AFH has added £1.5bn in funds under management through its 16 acquisitions this year, its annual report shows. The firm, which operates financial advice, discretionary management and platform services, says that funds under management reached £4.4bn in October, up from £2.8bn a year previously. £1.5bn of the inflows came from acquisitions, compared to £440m […]
Prudential has launched a new fund for higher-risk investors as part of a new risk-managed range. The updated PruFolio Risk Managed fund range consists of 14 funds- five passive, five active and five smoothed funds – and includes a new fund, the Risk Managed PruFund 5. The funds’ investment objective will no longer specify a maximum […]
Like many others, I have spent the past few weeks setting my mind to planning and thinking about the year ahead. Already it is clear that the theme for this year is going to be mindfulness. I don’t know about you but sometimes I feel like I am constantly on the back foot, dodging this […]
A vital element of the new Single Financial Guidance Body’s role should be helping the public understand the difference between free, impartial guidance and expert, impartial advice, so consumers recognise the value added by professional financial advisers. The new body merges three old consumer organisations: Pension Wise, the Money Advice Service and The Pensions Advisory Service. […]
Ipsos Mori has been ranking professions according to how much the British public trusts them for 35 years, and doctors consistently come first or second. The latest survey shows 92 per cent trust doctors to tell us the truth. Financial advisers are not included in the survey. The least-trusted occupations are advertising, politics and my […]
I’ve just spent about half an hour watching a client testimonial video our friends at St James’s Place just posted on their LinkedIn account. I know, sometimes I really do have the best job in the world. It is a fascinating case study on the advice giant’s marketing appeal. Love them or hate them, the […]
Competition on overdraft charges alone will not do the trick. Banks should charge us for each service Has anyone ever queried how much it actually costs to run a bank account? I asked myself that question a few weeks ago, after receiving an annual letter from my bank detailing how much I had paid that […]
Last month, Wingate Financial Planning director Alistair Cunningham wrote an article in Money Marketing arguing that chartered status had been cheapened, citing high-profile incidents of chartered financial planners involved in poor advice as one reason why. For the record, Sandringham is not currently chartered. The question for us and other non-chartered firms remains whether there […]
A new year is a good time to reflect on the 12 months gone by and look ahead at what is to come. We have been asking what our firm has done well, where we can improve and what our targets for this year are. Last year was good for us. It was our first […]
A few decades ago, it was not at all unusual for ordinary workers in the UK to have a defined benefit pension scheme provided by their employer. That has all changed now, of course. Very few employers now offer DB schemes to new workers and the schemes we do have, in the private sector at […]
Continuing the theme of later life care my previous columns have centred on, it seems not a week goes by without some other great revelation hitting me in the face. This time, it is the legislation surrounding care home contracts and top-up fees. Who knew so many care homes attempt to get friends and family […]
This Christmas may be the last time anyone goes a bit overdrawn and is hammered by “high”, “complex” and “harmful” overdraft charges. Because in December 2019, new rules from the FCA will force banks to stop confusing consumers by hiding their excessive fees. Great news. But the best present of all in the FCA’s 215-page […]
According to HM Revenue & Customs, tax doesn’t have to be taxing. But try telling that to anyone who has retired recently and taken advantage of their new pension freedoms. Retirement used to be simple. On your 65th birthday you cleared your desk, thanked your boss for the carriage clock and went home to await […]
The way centralised investment propositions run today is far from perfect. So where do we go from here? There should be a name for the rule of thumb that says, just as the retail financial services industry reaches some consensus that something should be done a certain way, it all starts falling apart. In fact, […]
A look at the important take-aways from the senior manager regime’s previous implementation for those beginning their own preparations The forthcoming extension of the Senior Managers & Certification Regime represents the next major regulatory change that gets to the heart of a firm’s culture, governance and operational considerations. SM&CR implementation will not be a one-time […]
There are many tax-efficient benefits to holding funds in a private company whose shareholders are family members The 2018 autumn Budget confirmed the scheduled reduction of the main rate of corporation tax to 17 per cent from April 2020. Good news for corporates – although, even at its current level of 19 per cent, the […]
The CII’s new reassessment exam has increased focus on how advisers maintain competency, yet just 57 per cent follow a process Each month, our New Model Business Academy surveys its members on hot topics. With the recent introduction of a reassessment exam from the Chartered Insurance Institute and FCA, last month we looked at the […]
Last month, the BBC’s Money Box covered the story of a protection customer who had seen her quoted life and critical illness premium rise by around a third after she disclosed a historic mental health issue. The woman was taking cover as a parent of young children and had originally chosen an insurer after getting […]
A weekly account of the curious goings-on in the world of financial services from Money Marketing’s diary page at our Wells Street HQ Backing the wrong horse Retirement solutions provider Embark Group happily took to Twitter last week following the inaugural appearance of its logo on Rotherham United’s football shirts. It did not escape WSJ’s […]
Career opportunities are being spurned, despite the lure of big-money bonuses Despite offers of increasingly large pay packets and bonus incentives, advisers are frequently turning away from job opportunities where the company will not make sure the culture fits their need, according to a new white paper. Alex Russon, managing consultant at Heat Recruitment, which […]
Few investments saw high returns last year Markets last year were akin to a boxing match, with investors strutting into the ring in January 2018 full of beans and swagger, but ending it on the canvas, down but not knocked out. It was a bruising year, especially for equities globally, and despite a short-lived post-Boxing […]
News and expert analysis straight to your inbox
Sign up
In the wake of yesterday’s Parliamentary vote on the proposed Brexit deal, join Karen Ward, Chief Market Strategist for EMEA, as she assesses the outcome, impact on markets and potential next steps.
Welcome to the first episode of our newest video series on the UK Edge. Andrew Robbens walks us through J.P. Morgan’s UK Equities fund range in preparation for deep dives on individual funds coming in the new year.
Global growth looks set to re-converge at a more lacklustre pace. Karen Ward, Chief Market Strategist for EMEA, looks ahead to 2019 and considers what might lie in store for global economies.
The UK Edge asked Andy Robbens, Investment Specialist at J.P.Morgan Asset Management what an average day for him looks like.
Welcome to the UK Edge’s latest video series – ‘A day in the life of’. In this first episode we follow Investment Specialist Andrew Robbens during a typical day at the J. P. Morgan London offices.
With just over four months to go until the deadline for the UK to leave the EU, Karen Ward, Chief Market Strategist for EMEA and formerly Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers to Philip Hammond, assesses the lay of the land.
Last month, star manager Terry Smith announced he was throwing £25m of his own money behind a new investment trust, Smithson. Ahead of its launch, Money Marketing editor Justin Cash sat down with Simon Barnard and Will Morgan, the fund’s managers, to talk strategy, as well as their thoughts on some of the hottest topics […]
PFS chief executive Keith Richards, Threesixty managing director Russell Facer and financial planner Susan Hill sit down with Money Marketing editor Justin Cash to discuss what’s wrong with the FSCS, and how it can be reformed.
Welcome to the on-demand version of our latest Wired event: The politics of Brexit – What investors need to know. Exclusively for UK Edge members!
Welcome to the third instalment of our good life gurus series. We talk to Kate Shaw, an IFA and ultra runner, to find out how she got started with an exercise regime and how a healthy lifestyle helps her with her work-life balance.
Catch up with last week’s Money Marketing debate on what Labour would mean for financial planners with former pensions minister Steve Webb and three leading advisers.
FSCS levies are one of the biggest bills advisers have to pay. But how are they calculated? Watch our video to find out Advisers slam levy increases as FSCS bills hit desks Solving the FSCS’ long list of problems FSCS chief executive Mark Neale’s blog
UK investment bonds have, for too long, been overshadowed by alternative tax wrappers and the perception that tax within a life fund is a disadvantage. This thinking can automatically discount an investment solution that can be very favourable, especially when you consider the tax changes over recent years. UK investment bonds can offer the right […]
Trevor Greetham, Head of Multi Asset at Royal London Asset Management shares his 2018 & Q4 review. Volatility was back with a vengeance last year after a quiet 2017. Trevor reviews global investment returns over 2018 and explains why he starts 2019 with a relatively constructive view on stock markets. Read the review here Past […]
Read the latest thoughts from Trevor Greetham in our Investment Clock Strategy report ‘Premature recession fears’. An upturn in volatility remains apparent as Wall Street experienced one of its worst December’s since the Great Depression. Recession fears continue to rise and markets are pricing in this eventuality, but current sentiment readings are extremely depressed, the […]
At a time of extreme uncertainty, specialists from our fixed income team share their views on fixed income markets as we enter 2019 and discuss why they expect the recent volatility in markets to continue. Jonathan Platt, Head of Fixed Income, Ewan McAlpine, Fixed Income Product Specialist, and Head of Global High Yield Azhar Hussain […]
From DB transfers to Brexit: Steve Webb, Director of Policy and External Communications at Royal London, considers the big stories in pensions from the last 12 months. Transfers One of the dominant pension stories of 2018 was the large numbers of people taking advantage of pension freedoms to transfer money out of their defined benefit […]
Trevor Greetham, Head of Multi Asset at Royal London Asset Management, looks ahead to 2019 when it comes to investments. Market volatility picked up markedly in 2018 as global growth slowed, US interest rates rose and geopolitical stress intensified. Investing is about deciding which risks are really opportunities and which are best neutralised. While the […]
The new PFS president and Sanlam UK Wealth Division chief executive is keen to remind advisers they are a force for good There is always room for improvement, whatever job you do. It is why line managers bother doing staff appraisals. It is why business owners spend time and money on consultants to help them […]
FP Wealth Management director on helping other advice firms reap the benefits of taking on students If the future of advice makes you think of technology, think again. It is really all about people. A business cannot function without good people – something FP Wealth Management director Ian Bentley is well aware of. For the […]
LEBC director of public policy and investment committee chairman Kay Ingram on giving clients access to the defensive qualities of active funds, even though passive funds have lower charges Do you approach investment management in-house, outsource it or combine both?We do both as we look after a wide variety of clients, ranging from group pension […]