If you’d told me 10 years ago that Paraplanners would don warpaint once a year and happily gather to chew over technical issues in a giant teepee in Northants I might have suggested you’d been smoking the peace pipe a bit too long.

St James’s Place Wealth Management has recently been hammered in the press, particularly by the Times, over its incentive schemes. At the risk of being hung, drawn and quartered I believe the criticism has been over-done.

I must confess I always had reservations about the Pension Freedoms when they were introduced by George Osborne in 2015 and the latest FCA figures seem to back up comments I made at the time.

It was good to get to the CISI 2019 Financial Planning Conference in Birmingham this week and meet some old faces - always one of the highlights of these events for me.

The Financial Planning profession is heading in a new direction and there’s no better evidence of this than today’s (11 October) PFS Graduation Ceremony in the august surroundings of the Merchant Taylor’s Hall in the City of London.

As June passes into July we not only have the peak of summer to look forward to, but Amazon Prime Day – so big it’s 2 days long!

We’re currently working on how we can demonstrate and track the value we add for our clients – although we know we add value, it’s difficult to put numbers to without some serious spreadsheet activity.

I have a dream...Actually I genuinely do still have a dream.

I’m annoyed about this! About it being all about us in the profession, apparently failing to address this crucial issue of the advice gap.

I got back recently from a holiday in Central America. I learned to scuba dive in the Bay Islands of Honduras and then flew north to explore Guatemala. A wonderful experience all round.