A tsunami is usually defined as a natural disaster. By contrast, the tsunami of tributes and messages of condolence that has engulfed the world of financial services this week, in response to the passing of Mike Morrison on 6 November, is a natural expectation.
AMPS has paid tribute to leading Sipps commentator and former AMPS chairman Mike Morrison, head of platform technical at AJ Bell, who died unexpectedly at the age of 55 earlier this week.
Recently there was a consumer programme on Radio 4 at lunchtime which reignited in my mind the need for a permitted investment list for SIPPs.
In the run-up to pension freedoms people seemed to be speaking about pensions in a different way. There was new excitement over the removal of the need to buy an annuity (even though this had been the case for some time already).
Many years ago (as some of the best stories begin) when I was working for Winterthur Life, I undertook a series of talks around the UK.
I have just finished AJ Bell’s annual tour of the UK where a host of lucky advisers got to hear me talk about the current key pension issues.
As is to be expected, a lot of the conversations that I have recently had with advisers have centred around defined benefit (DB) transfers.
We are fast approaching at the second anniversary of the pension freedoms and the removal of the requirement to buy an annuity (officially that is – the real compulsion went several years before). In that two years the focus has been on the numbers – what has been cashed, how much tax has been generated, what product options are popular and very little on how the money has been spent.
I always take an interest in the figures from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) about SIPP claims.
Two of the big things on the pension calendar for 2017 are John Cridland’s review of the state pension age and the review of auto enrolment. I like to think that the two reviews are linked in a linear way.
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