Money Management articles from August 2006

Money Management archives from August 2006

Up, up and away.
August 1, 2006... Strong demand from Standard Life members meant that the life assurer was 75% owned by customers when it floated on 10 July, in Britain's largest initial public offering for six years. About 2.5m members received an average windfall of...

Fidelity thumbs up.
August 1, 2006... IFAs have backed Fidelity's decision to split its Special Situations fund, according to the results of a Money Management poll. Just under three quarters (73%) of respondents said that Anthony Bolton's AGBP6bn Special Situations fund should...

Mind the gap.
August 1, 2006... Final salary pension scheme deficits fell from AGBP52bn to AGBP35bn in June despite lacklustre stock markets, a survey has revealed. The survey, by Aon Consulting, which tracks the deficits of the UK's 200 largest defined benefit (DB)...

Nucleus power.
August 1, 2006... Following hot on the heels of the launch of IFA-backed wrap initiative Nucleus, Friends Provident is the latest provider to announce its intention to bring a wrap platform to market. Friends Provident says that its wrap offering will launch...

Blast from the past.
August 1, 2006... As reported in the August 1981 edition of Money Management, the issue of commissions was one that would not go away, with the industry split on the worth of a maximum commission agreement (MCA). The main argument came from the Life...

Prove your skills.
August 1, 2006... Advisers who specialise in the older client market will soon have a way of proving their expertise. 'Later life planning adviser' accreditation is expected to be available from September through the Financial Services Skills Council...

GROUP INCOME PROTECTION Severing the link.
August 1, 2006... UnumProvident has devised a group income protection (IP) product, called Pay Direct, which continues claim payments to employees who are no longer with their original employer. Employees who are unable to work due to illness or disability...

RETIREMENT PLANNING Alternatives for income.
August 1, 2006... Two pension products that are effectively halfway houses between annuities and income drawdown have been launched by new company Living Time, with plans underwritten by AIG Life. Both plans -" Living Time 75 and Living Time Income...

MORTGAGES Shout it from the rooftops.
August 1, 2006... A mortgage aimed specifically at first time buyers that uses 12 months' proven rental payments as affordability criteria has been launched by specialist lender Rooftop Mortgages. The so-called 'rent to buy' mortgage is exclusively...

Sir Anthony Bolton?
August 1, 2006... Anthony Bolton will soon be scaling down his activities as a fund manager and plans to retire from active fund management early in 2008. There has been a huge amount of press comment on this, but very little on the impact of his career. ...

Funding the FOS.
August 1, 2006... I enjoyed your May 06 Q &A article with Walter Merricks (July 06 issue). I believe the current complaint system does not allow advisers to stand their ground when they are in the right. Complainants can dispute everything and have nothing to...

Annuities.
August 1, 2006... I have recently been asked for advice concerning a compulsory purchase annuity, where the focus of the enquiry is the difference between a level, and a so-called indexed annuity. It is not in doubt that an indexed annuity will start at a much...

MULTI-MANAGER Best of the best?
August 1, 2006... Skandia Investment Management has launched the Global Best Ideas fund, an OEIC (or investment company with variable capital), which is an unfettered manager of managers fund. The fund brings together five UK focused fund managers: Stephen...

Endowment mortgages.
August 1, 2006... First may I say thank you for the work you are doing. Your magazine is my preferred monthly reading. I am encouraged by the recent articles on trusts, and I love your editorial; Holly Williams' article "Red letter days" (June 2006 issue) is...

Financial strength of with profits offices.
August 1, 2006... If 2004 was a year of change, as life offices got to grips with the FSA's realistic regulatory regime, and a host of new jargon such as PPFMs (principles and practices of financial management), WPICCs (with profits insurance capital component)...

Burden of proof.
August 1, 2006... Alliance & Leicester's announcement in June that it was to debut in the self-certification mortgage market marked a coming of age for the specialist home loan sector. The news signalled a confidence in what was previously a niche market and...

Results laid bare.
August 1, 2006... In March this year, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) introduced a new reporting requirement which required life assurance companies to disclose their with profits maturity and surrender values and to make these available to public...

Ingot we trust.
August 1, 2006... A flurry of activity in the commodities market during May saw the price of gold reach the $730 per troy ounce mark. Not since the early 1980s had the precious metal witnessed such a hike, when the price reached an all time high of $850 per...

Regulation rip-off.
August 1, 2006... The retail financial services market pays more than twice as much for regulation than the rest of the finance sector in the UK, an industry study has found. The average proportion of operating costs spent on FSA fees was 2.7% for pensions...

Up close and personal.
August 1, 2006... Business sections of newspapers have been full of private equity buyouts in recent months, ranging from Man U to Debenhams (the department store), the AA, BAA, and AB Ports. Yet few people have any grasp of what they are and how they work, and...

SIPPs for all too much to swallow?
August 1, 2006... Industry experts claim the future is self invested persona pensions (SIPPs). Millions of British (non) savers are apparently ready to adopt the virtues of self-investment for their pensions. But hold on -" surely SIPPs were introduced for those...

Taking stock.
August 1, 2006... Investment practitioners define risk as price volatility. And there was plenty of that this May and June. Prices of the more exposed emerging markets fell by 20% or so and, more generally, all those book profits salivated over by investors in...

Back to the future.
August 1, 2006... Many years ago, gathering of leads by firms of tied agents via clipboard operators was rife in the streets of London. They were as prolific then as the street charity fundraisers are today and just as persistent with their perma-smiles and...

A dilemma of interest.
August 1, 2006... It is the classic renting versus buying debate revisited. An IFA recently set up a scenario in a popular online IFA chat forum, challenging mortgage advisers to respond. A client is paying rent of AGBP750pm which rises every year by 4%. If he...

Back to polarisation.
August 1, 2006... My understanding was that it was hoped that the banks would multi-tie and thus there would be more choice for those who were silly enough to buy their financial products from a bank. I am unaware of a single bank going down this route as...

A-Day commission cap.
August 1, 2006... Pension providers are clamping down on the commission available on large post A-Day contributions. Scottish Widows, Scottish Equitable and Clerical Medical have set formal contribution limits, while Friends Provident has imposed stricter...

Left high and dry?
August 1, 2006... The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) has not ruled out offering financial redress to potential compensation claimants of defunct IFA Millfield. The FSCS confirmed that claimants would currently have to seek redress from...

World Cup winner.
August 1, 2006... This year's World Cup may have been full of surprises right to the very end, but the biggest shock of all has come in our fantasy football competition, run in conjunction with F&C, where Scotland has experienced its first World Cup triumph. ...

On the level.
August 1, 2006... The pace of mortgage endowment mis-selling claims may be slowing, according to new figures released by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). The figures, part of the ombudsman's annual review of personal finance disputes, show that while...

Compensation culture.
August 1, 2006... The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) has backed plans to introduce a compensation funding scheme that is fairer to IFAs. The IFA sector currently shoulders much of the cost of compensation and will have to pay AGBP47.5m in...

Top 100 unit trusts.
August 1, 2006... Now is an interesting time to do a new survey of the top 100 unit trusts and OEICs (now termed investment companies with variable capital (ICVC)). Since Money Management's last analysis in 2003 there have been some significant changes in the...

FOS staff not qualified?
August 1, 2006... The July issue of Money Management featured a letter from IFA Nick Bamford of Informed Choice regarding the June issue interview with FOS chief ombudsman Walter Merricks. Bamford was not happy with one of the answers given to the editor by...

Valuing transfer.
August 1, 2006... IFAs are being urged to hold off from advising clients on transferring out of defined benefit (DB) pension schemes while critical pension proposals are hammered out. Plans put forward in a new consultation paper from the Department for...