Director Share Purchase is an agreement underpinned by life cover that is there to try and protect business owners and their families.
So what does it do?
Read More
This blog post is for you if you would like a ‘plain English’ explanation of the property fund suspensions, levies, postponed surrenders and property fund penalties that we have heard about recently.
In early July, property funds began to announce s…
Read More
There is still confusion about the State Pension, and with the introduction of the single tier pension we thought it might be useful to clarify the changes:
• The single tier pension was introduced from 6th April 2016. If you were already over State P…
Read More
As we hurtle through 2016 there is good news and bad news coming out of the Auto Enrolment world.
Are you ready?
The good news:
Read More
Step forward the new Lifetime ISA!
You can save money in a tax free environment, up to £4,000 each year, and receive a government bonus of 25% – that’s a bonus of up to £1,000 a year. You can use some or all of the money to buy your first home, or kee…
Read More
The news this morning has shocked stock markets and we understand that you will want to know how your investments will be affected.
You might be wondering if you should sell out until the trouble blows over. We expect lots of ups and downs in the nex…
Read More
The News often seems to affect stock market returns and the Brexit referendum on 23rd June is no different to that. There is certainly a lot of news on this topic, and quite right too; it is important. But are we missing a bigger picture? Perhaps. Let'…
Read More
Well Andrew Haldane seems to think so!
My usual morning scan of my generic news app led me to an interesting article this morning. The Bank of England's Andrew Haldane says he cannot make "the remotest sense of pensions" and many experts "have no clue…
Since the chancellor made his budget statement yesterday I have read numerous articles, like this one: http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/huge-risk-lifetime... and attended a budget briefing from the prominent Manchester based accountancy Kay Johnson Gee: http://www.kayjohnsongee.com both of which suggest there is a potential conflict between the Lifetime ISA and Auto Enrolment.
Read More
Where are we?
Time wise we are well past half way, members wise we are also past half way, employers wise we're just getting started.
Read More
2016 – What’s in store?
Circa 512,000 companies to stage this year! These companies employ well over 1,250,000 people.
Read More
With such dramatic increases in companies staging, the auto enrolment/workplace pensions market place is having to evolve; fast!
To give you an idea of the scale of change:
Quarter 4 2015: 16,100 firms due to stage
Read More
By March this year, 29 months in, over 5,200,000 works have been successfully automatically enrolled. A vast improvement and a turning around of the decade-long decline in pension provision, with 59% of all employees now active members of a pension compared with 47% in 2012.
Read More
Now that Schroders are in charge, they have now turned their attention to making changes to their range of UK OEICs and unit trusts.
Some of the fund names have changed, for example, the Strategic Bond funds are now named ‘Strategic Credit funds’.
In…
Read More
The 2014 budget has given us some very useful surprises, but what do they mean for you? Read on if ‘retirement’ will be in the next 12 months for you, because this could make a big difference.
Pensions have seen very welcome changes for those who did …
Read More
‘2013 was a good year for Greece’ – some unexpected words to start our first bulletin of the year with, but among some truly impressive stock market performances in 2013 the Greek index was up 27% to close at 1,163. It’s perhaps still not the place whe…
Read More
Happy New Year and welcome to our first newsletter of 2014!
After a fantastic 2013, we’re looking forward to another great year here, with plenty on the horizon for all of us over the next 12 months.
With an election year coming in 2015, it’s likely …
Read More
Responding to increasing fears that the UK could be on the edge of another housing bubble, The Bank of England took steps at the end of November to quash the increasing tide of new mortgages.
Concerns around any new bubble in the housing market have b…
Read More
The economies on both sides of the Atlantic might be showing clear signs of an upturn as we start the New Year, but that doesn’t mean we can suddenly afford to ignore our personal financial planning. So in the best traditions of New Year here are ten f…
Read More
You may have noticed coverage in the press that the annual allowance for pension contributions – ‘pension input amounts’ – will reduce from £50,000 to £40,000 for the next tax year… having already reduced from £255,000 to £50,000 in April 2011.
The pr…
Read More