Popular News
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SPP says changing salary sacrifice would be negative
Changes to salary sacrifice would cause confusion, reduce benefits to employees, and disincentivise pension savings, The Society of Pension Professionals has warned.
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Retirement standard figures should be ‘wake-up call’
Pension experts said that today’s figures from the PLSA about retirement living standards should be a ‘wake-up call’ for savers.
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Minimum needed for retirement falls by £1,000: PLSA
The minimum amount someone needs in retirement has fallen, according to the latest update of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association’s (PLSA) Retirement Living Standards report.
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Wealth transfer as important as estate planning to clients
Transferring wealth between generations is as important to clients of Financial Planning firms as retirement, according to a new study.
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Wealth transfer is priority since Budget pension proposals
Advisers and clients have become more concerned about wealth transfer since the Government’s proposals in the Autumn Budget to include unused pension assets in the estate for inheritance tax.
Latest Blog
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James Jones-Tinsley: Aiming for an advice-guidance sweetspot
As Nikhil Rathi is reappointed as CEO of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for another five years, the FCA has set out its strategic direction for 2025/26, with important implications for financial advisers.
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Lisa Webster: Divorce impact on lump sums raises question
The lifetime allowance may have been consigned to the annals of history but the various forms of protection are still relevant in the new world, especially when it comes to the amount of pension commencement lump sum (PCLS) that can be taken.
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Martin Tilley: How education can tackle pension scams
The dark reality of pension scams is that we don’t really know how common they are. Fraud is a crime which tends to have low reporting events and with pension scams, it’s no different. The emotional toll can be as large as the financial, with some people being too embarrassed to report that they have been the victim of a scam.
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Lisa Webster: Maximising protected tax-free cash
While 2024 ended with a lot of doom and gloom in the pension world following the big announcement on inheritance tax (IHT), there was some good news that may have slipped under the radar of some advisers.
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Tilley: Is the age 75 trigger date now irrelevant?
Age 75 has been an important milestone in pension rules since A day in 2006. It was the latest age at which a compulsory annuity purchase was required (prior to Pensions Freedoms). It's arguably it’s long been an arbitrary line in the sand, noting that life expectancy has been on the increase for the last 20 years, but this trigger age has remained unchanged.
Over four in five retired annuity holders who would likely qualify for an enhanced annuity do not currently have one, according to new research.
The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), the safety net scheme for consumers, paid out £423m in compensation to customers during its 2023/24 year, £20m higher than the previous year.
Sheldon Mills, executive director of consumers and competition at the FCA, has claimed that Consumer Duty has been a great success in a speech at an event celebrating the Duty’s anniversary.
Pension scam warning ‘flags’ have climbed to their highest level in nine months, according to a warning from pensions consulting and administration business XPS.
The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), the industry-funded safety net for consumers, has warned it is seeing a rise in more complex SIPP claims after it paid out a total of £423m in compensation in its 2023/24 year.
Three financial advisers who pocketed almost £6m in ‘marketing fees’ relating to an SIPP which included inappropriate high-risk bonds, have been penalised almost £4m by the FCA and prohibited from any regulated activity.