The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published a 41-page piece of guidance for businesses on how to treat vulnerable customers better. The guidance is split into a number of sections: understanding the needs of vulnerable customers, skills and capability of staff, product and service design, customer services, communications, and monitoring and evaluation. Fundamentally, the FCA […]

Pension scams have cost savers a shocking £4bn, according to a Times piece at the weekend which highlighted how cases of mis-selling rose sharply after 2015 – when pension freedom was introduced – while more than 100,000 people transferred out of defined benefit schemes last year. Continuing down that line, it also says pension transfers […]

Having been in this business for 30+ years, it is fair to say that I am not in the first flush of youth.   And that length of time in business has set me thinking about two very important points.  First, is financial services a career for young people? And second, if so, are young people […]

I’ve just been reading a report which said that hundreds of thousands of unadvised drawdown investors are unaware they can scale back or even stop their withdrawals, according to new research from a major pension provider. In April, the Company concerned carried out an online survey of 2,028 adults aged over  the age of 55 […]

The picture-perfect view of being self-employed is understandably attractive: the notion of being your own boss and doing what you love under your own steam. In fact, the number of self-employed workers in the UK has steadily risen from 3.3 million in 2001 to 4.8 million in 2017, according to latest figures. However, recent statistics […]

THE ISA FAMILY The Basic ISA 6 – April 1999 The original ISA has two investment components: stocks and shares or cash. These are now interchangeable, so you can transfer from a stocks and shares ISA to a cash ISA, or vice versa.  Available from age 18 (16 and 17-year-olds may start one but only […]