IFA consolidator Absolute Financial Group has acquired Platinum Independent Financial Services based in Sale, Greater Manchester for an undisclosed amount.

Evelyn Partners has appointed Aaron Mcloughlin as partner in Financial Planning at its Southampton office.

Quilter has instructed Merrill Lynch International to handle the final £30m of its £100m share buyback programme which it plans to complete by November.

Plymouth-based, M&G-owned national IFA Continuum has recruited specialist investments and pensions financial adviser Alex Gray from True Potential, where he was a self-employed financial adviser.

AJ Bell, in partnership with Technical Connection and Ad Lucem, has launched what it is calling its 'Great Wrapper Reset' campaign which will visit 10 locations starting in Edinburgh from today.

Pensions giant Standard Life has posted a loss of £179m for the first six months of the year, 15% higher than the £156m loss posted in the first half of 2025.

Erin Rigault works as an IFA at national financial advice firm Continuum. She is passionate about encouraging young people to consider careers as Financial Planners and wants more advisers to work with schools to help find new recruits to the profession and educate young people about money skills. In this guest column for Financial Planning Today she addresses the crisis in finding new advisers.

London-based firm Equitrade Markets Ltd (441877) has been declared in default by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

It’s ironic that many pension savers will spend most of their working lives trying to build up a pension pot and then, increasingly, spend a large chunk of their retirement trying to beat off fraudsters, scammers and crooks trying to take it from them.

Over the last few years we’ve run many survey-type stories highlighting that women are often the poor relations when it comes to saving and investing. They often fare worse on pension saving, lack confidence in investing and have less set aside.