The Personal Finance Society has always been something of a problem child for its parent the Chartered Insurance Institute.
I have to confess that I scratched my head this week when I heard the news that JP Morgan Chase was buying the loss-making robo-adviser Nutmeg.
It was good to get away last week for a break to sunny Devon, beating the G7 hordes heading to the South West.
Clients are getting older, on average. It’s an inescapable fact that I was reminded of this week with the launch by St James’s Place of its Care Concierge service, aimed particularly at clients over-80.
During a call with a client last week, I was reminded again of the dangers of unregulated investments. The client explained that his good friend had lost £120,000 to a Bitcoin scam.
Whenever I hear of a new regulatory initiative designed to crack down on rogues or bad practice I always resist the temptation to cheer straightaway.
Consumers just do not trust financial services firms, that’s the long and the short of it.
The pandemic is not over yet, far from it, and it is too early to predict the long term impact but if there is one certainty it is that many people’s retirement plans are changing.
If there is one positive from the London Capital & Finance fiasco it is that the whole sorry business has prompted government and regulatory action to stop a repeat of LCF.
What quality matters most to our clients? Whatever else comes along, no machine or tool will ever replace empathy and that's the quality that all of our clients seek.
More...
I seem to spend a lot of my time discussing the lifetime allowance, so when it was announced in Budget 2021 that it would be frozen with immediate effect for the next five tax years I knew this would only increase these conversations.
Our usual way of life has been turned upside down by the global pandemic. Thankfully, due to the exceptional role out of the UK Covid-19 vaccination programme, the hope that life will return to some semblance of normality is a realistic prospect.
The rules of financial regulation were effectively torn up and rewritten this week after the Government stepped in and launched a £120m compensation fund for victims of the London Capital & Finance collapse.
This week I did something rather different. I put on a pair of black work shoes, a decent work shirt and a pair of trousers. I then went to my annual business meeting at our accountants.