I had a coffee with a director of a bank the other day. Not one of those nasty high-street banks, but a challenger one, with a refreshingly different approach to doing business. Our conversation got onto the subject of culture. We agreed that, despite the world changing and consumer demand for banking services looking very different […]
The Financial Guidance and Claims Bill is debated by the Public Bill Committee today as the Government faces pressure to back a House of Lords amendment which would see savers automatically enrolled into guidance when they access the pension freedoms. Pensions minister Guy Opperman’s decision to remove the amendment last month has been heavily criticised […]
Eventually, there will come a time when I stop having to write about defined benefit pension transfers. It will be a quieter, simpler time, where the last vestiges of gold-plating are gone and deferred members no longer exist. Unfortunately, that time is not this week. Workshops, seminars and training days have exploded across the UK […]
As you can see, the Money Marketing website looks very different than what you are used to. A lot of work has gone into the redesign, and I wanted to take a bit of time to explain the new look and why we have made the decisions we have. When we redesigned the magazine just […]
I like to think one of the skills that makes me a decent adviser is the ability to convert complex, illogical and sometimes-opaque notions into bite-sized snippets of information clients might understand. Thirty years in the job has led me to accept, although we live and breathe our subject, that is simply not the case […]
The introduction of pension freedoms and the end of the tax year have had advisers rushed off their feet of late. But we now have a bit more time to consider the way forward while the sun shines and the spring bulbs bloom. I have not seen many Lamborghinis around town so Steve Webb’s, perhaps […]
I have been reading the commentary and social media activity around the recent BACK2Y conference with huge interest. I should probably declare some interests here. I went to the first conference last year and would have gone again this year if not for a diary clash. I have known and respected founder Paul Armson for […]
In an era of mobile devices, working remotely and Cloud computing, the modern way of working means data security is increasingly crucial. One wrong move could ultimately bring down a company if sensitive data gets into the wrong hands. It is easy to be derisory of the security lapses committed by others. Briefcases or laptops […]
Of all the sayings about the media’s need to remain neutral when delivering information to the public, one of the most over-used is that from former Guardian editor CP Scott back in the 1920s: “Comment is free but facts are sacred.” If so, then my column last week, in which I criticised the backward nature […]
At the beginning of the month, Nick and Martin Bamford caused amusement around the industry by announcing the launch of Informed Choice’s robo-adviser as an April Fools prank. What many in the industry might find scary, however, is that they are not too far away from the truth. The emergence of real robo-advisers is, in […]
Pension tax relief has come under fire this month as the three main political parties unveiled their election manifestos. First to be revealed was the Labour plan to restrict tax relief for top-rate taxpayers (around 300,000 people) to the same level as basic-rate payers: i.e. 20 per cent. The cut would begin at £150,000, tapering […]
There are some big changes happening under the surface in the platform market at the moment. With all of the excitement around the pension reforms currently it is easy to forget about the shifts in platform technology that are either in progress or on the horizon. And it is even easier to overlook the impact […]