Tag Archives: Treasury

The Monarch and the Baroness – long live our queens!

Well done Ma’am! It’s a good week for the monarchy – and for our revered Queen Elizabeth who today becomes Britain’s longest reigning monarchy. Enough has been said about Elizabeth Regina for me to trouble these pages with further congratulation. She’s been … Continue reading

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Michael Johnson and the Super ISA

This is the latest from tax and pensions supremo – Michael Johnson. Love it or hate it – the pensions ISA or Super ISA as Michael calls it- looks set to dominate our thinking over the next few months   … Continue reading

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What the great fall of China does to my pension.

The falls in the world stock markets since April appear huge, our own market has fallen 15% , market in Asia, much more. But the equity market that has fallen the most is China. The great fall of China is … Continue reading

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The tricky job of enrolling the self-employed into pensions

The estimate from the Citizen’s Advice Bureau that some 460,000 extra workers are currently missing out on auto-enrolment because employers deem them independently self-employed seems reasonable. When employers conduct a workforce assessment, they generally do so with a cut of … Continue reading

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Financial advisors need better retirement products

Better products that deliver what they say I had the pleasure of Chris Radford’s company over the weekend. Chris is a consultant to pension providers , a regular at our Pension lunches and someone who thinks about the way ordinary people … Continue reading

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Is increasing complexity making pension saving harder ? – guest blog by Ralph Frank.

The most conclusive finding of a recent survey by PwC into pensions taxation was not even related to the respondents’ views on the central question of the survey (namely, the most appealing tax scenario for their pension)! Sixty percent of … Continue reading

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Addiction

Addiction is not a word that resonates positively. But we had a discussion yesterday centred on getting people addicted to properly managing their money, in which the word seemed entirely appropriate. People get addicted to courses of action resulting from a … Continue reading

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Are the goal posts about to be moved again? (guest blog by Ralph Frank)

  This week has seen the announcement of another consultation, this time intofinancial advice.  The terms of reference have been published at this stage, with the details of the consultation to follow in the Autumn.   One of the stated … Continue reading

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Why “pensions ISAs” must be more than ISAs

Ros Altmann has recently commented that simply topping up ISAs and calling them “Pension ISAs” is not going to help solve our long-term retirement problems. The danger of using the ISA structure is that it ignores the fundamentals- that people … Continue reading

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Free to overpay tax?? – what kind of freedom is that?

Question – when is a freedom a pension freedom? Answer- when its got a big tax-bill attached! The pensions minister Ros Altmann has said the government’s proposals to tax pensions in a similar way to individual savings accounts could be … Continue reading

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