Money Management articles from February 2007

Money Management archives from February 2007

The biter bit.
February 1, 2007... An indignant letter to the editor popped up in my email inbox this week from claims management company Brunel Franklin. The letter was complaining about 'research' (their quote marks) published by the ABI showing that consumers get a much...

Stamped out.
February 1, 2007... Byline: Pension pots eroded by taxes on shares Stamp duty on share purchases is reducing the average pensions pot by AGBP8,000, according to Brewin Dolphin Securities, a portfolio management firm. The tax erodes any pension fund...

MM blog gathering momentum.
February 1, 2007... Byline: Four months in and going strong The Money Management blog, now in its fourth month, has already received a stream of reader comments on a variety of financial hot potatoes. So far, Walford's World has stirred up a string of...

Manager moves.
February 1, 2007... n Fidelity International has appointed Aris Vatis as manager of its AGBP1.45bn Fidelity Investment Funds American Fund. Vatis joined Fidelity in June 2006 after a 13 year career at Pictet Asset Management, where he was responsible for a fund of...

Last chance to tap tax benefit.
February 1, 2007... Byline: Deadline looms for carry back on RACs Holders of retirement annuity contracts (RACs) have until 31 January 2007 to carry back the tax relief on contributions made in the 2005/6 tax year. RACs were the forerunner of personal pensions...

FT fund link forum.
February 1, 2007... Byline: 2007 exclusive conference Financial Times Business, with Money Management and Financial Adviser, will host a brand new fund links forum this September, bringing together life offices, bancassurers, fund management houses and...

Equity release advice.
February 1, 2007... Byline: FSA publishes feedback The FSA has published a practical guide for lifetime mortgage advisers, which addresses the key findings from its mystery shopping exercise in 2006. The guide lists examples of good and bad practices...

Money Management is moving!
February 1, 2007... With effect from 22 January, Money Management has moved offices. We are now located at the head office of our parent company the Financial Times, at Number One Southwark Bridge, London SE1 9HL. Email addresses, as shown on page 17, are...

Blast from the past.
February 1, 2007... Byline: News from 25 years ago The beginning of the 1980s saw the birth of fund switching, as life companies began to offer wider ranges of funds and the facility to move investments between them. Originally offered as an add on to attract...

Reader wins war for MM.
February 1, 2007... Byline: MM back in local library after three years One dedicated Money Management reader has finally won a two year battle to have the magazine reinstated on the shelves of his local library. Graham Tilston, a 65-year-old pensioner...

A slice of the pie.
February 1, 2007... Byline: Self-invested personal pensions SIPP offers buy to let opportunity Aegon Scottish Equitable is offering its self invested personal pension (SIPP) holders the opportunity to invest in property by buying a room in a hotel. ...

Bearing little fruit.
February 1, 2007... Byline: Norwich Union's bonus claims don't quite add up Claims by Norwich Union that its with profits endowments have grown in value are misleading when compared with Money Management's own figures, which show that the provider's payouts...

Green or mean?
February 1, 2007... Byline: ENVIRONMENTAL FUNDS Neptune has launched its first 'green' fund, investing in the securities of companies whose main business is focused on improving the environment. The Green Planet Fund will invest in those companies whose...

A match made in heaven.
February 1, 2007... Byline: BUY to LET MORTGAGES Leeds Building Society is offering its first buy-to-let offset mortgage - one of only a handful available in the UK. The lender is offering the loan as a lifetime tracker, set at Bank of England base rate,...

Taking caution too far?
February 1, 2007... Byline: Diversified assets fund Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) has converted its managed portfolio trust to a new diversified assets fund, which it is marketing as an alternative to with profits. The SWIP Diversified...

Lucky strike.
February 1, 2007... Byline: STRUCTURED PRODUCTS Barclay's has issued a revamped version of its structured product range, with improved rates and greater IFA commission flexibility. Of the protected capital plans, the 3-year FTSE linked product now...

REIT around the world.
February 1, 2007... Byline: Property funds Standard Life and Sarasin Chiswell have each launched UK domiciled property funds that will focus on Global REIT investments. In January, Standard Life launched its Global REIT OEIC, which is aimed at UK investors...

Keeping track.
February 1, 2007... When the stock market tumbled in 2000, active as well as passive funds were badly mauled. But with the FTSE 100 reaching its highest point in six years in December at 6,260 and standing at 6,239 on 15 January, there could be a renewed interest...

Your MM online stats service.
February 1, 2007... Fund performance statistics have been an integral part of Money Management since its launch over 40 years ago. As long term readers will know, the stats coverage has undergone many changes along the way, and despite many imitators the MM stats...

Charges - sips or slurps?
February 1, 2007... Self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs), for decades a niche product for wealthy self-investors and for those saving through their business premises, was subtly relaunched as a pensions vehicle for the mass affluent in 2005. The SIPP...

A fairer approach to redress.
February 1, 2007... The IFA firm Garrison advised the complainants to invest into NDF Extra Income and Growth plans 3 and 5 (known as precipice bonds). The complainants held a significant number of equity based investments in their portfolio and their investment...

Myths and realities.
February 1, 2007... There is no accepted definition of a hedge fund and it is important to understand that they are far from homogeneous. There are actually about a dozen hedge fund strategies, each with quite different risk and returns characteristics. But,...

Capital assessments.
February 1, 2007... Byline: Life offices look to free assets Prudential and Pearl have followed Norwich Union's move to free their orphan assets. Prudential has over AGBP9bn in its life fund and is looking to appoint someone to represent policyholders'...

Miffed!
February 1, 2007... The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), due to take effect from November 2007, is a cornerstone of the European Commission's Financial Services Action Plan. This is intended to establish a single market and regulatory regime for...

Tax advantages of single premium bonds.
February 1, 2007... Single premium (onshore) life assurance bonds have been around for more than a generation, and have undergone several changes over the years. Now widely overtaken by investments such as unit trusts, OEICS, ISAs and various pensions, they have...

Joining the REIT gang.
February 1, 2007... As revellers were celebrating the beginning of the New Year, the financial services industry too was toasting the start of 2007 and a new era in property investment. 1 January 2007 marked the long awaited launch of real estate investment trusts...

Taking stock - cost vs return.
February 1, 2007... Corporate earnings boomed in 2006, and major stock markets now have a lower prices to earnings ratio (PERs) than at the start of 2006. Even though economic growth may slow in 2007, companies look financially strong and their share prices...

Planning your exit strategy.
February 1, 2007... IFAs are getting older. According to a recent report by the Association of Independent Advisers (AIFA), in association with the Daily Telegraph, 34% of IFAs are aged 45-54 (see ). That means over one third of IFAs currently in business right...

The NPSS is unworkable.
February 1, 2007... Byline: Auto-enrolment instead of compulsion stems from the misfit of NPSS with Pension Credit, suggests John Chapman The December 2006 DWP White Paper, 'Personal accounts: a new way to save', was warmly welcomed by the TUC and Which? The...

Valuation revolution.
February 1, 2007... Perhaps it was meant to be a spoiler for the launch of another new mortgage lender, but last September, GMAC became the first UK lender to offer instant mortgage offers online using automated valuation models (AVMs). The company believes that...

Platforms and wraps.
February 1, 2007... Open architecture systems promise attractive and efficient distribution for providers, increased transparency and value for the client and unprecedented power and control for advisers over their client portfolios and their businesses. With...

A suitability test.
February 1, 2007... As life expectancy increases and people become more used to a high standard of living, the question of how to fund retirement becomes an important one. A recent study from MetLife, an insurance and financial services provider, found that 74% of...

Missing a piece of the jigsaw?
February 1, 2007... At a workshop, a speaker from the FSA defined why it felt that equity release customers were "vulnerable" and it suddenly became clear where it was coming from. The FSA is not saying that older people are worse than younger people at making...

Not cutting the mustard.
February 1, 2007... Byline: Brokers want providers to raise reversion fees Mortgage brokers want providers to raise arrangement fees for lifetime mortgages to bring them in line with home reversions, warning that the current inequality could damage the value...

Impairment brings enhanced rates.
February 1, 2007... On average, we are all living longer. In 1901, males born in the UK could expect to live to around 45 years old and females to around 49. In the latter part of the 20th century life expectancy for adults increased dramatically. Life...

Equity who?
February 1, 2007... The equity release market generates a healthy flow of column inches in the financial press of both the trade and national publications that seems completely out of proportion to the business written. There were only around AGBP1.2bn of...

Growth potential.
February 1, 2007... Great things were predicted for the equity release market two or three years ago, particularly as house price inflation took off and pension schemes faltered. Since then, however, although the market has grown modestly year on year, the...

Funding care through equity release.
February 1, 2007... Long term care (LTC) is a frustrating market. It is generally acknowledged that a substantial proportion of people will need care at some point in retirement: data indicate that approximately one in four people will go into care before they die...

The real truth about home reversions.
February 1, 2007... When clients enter into a home reversion plan they are completing two simultaneous legal transactions: they are selling all or part of their beneficial interest in the property and entering into a lifetime lease. These two transactions provide...

VCTs - foreword.
February 1, 2007... Venture capital trusts (VCTs) are relatively new investment vehicles, introduced at the start of the 1995 tax year for investors who wanted to invest in unquoted companies while still spreading the risk by doing so through a vehicle. Given...

Enduring AIMs.
February 1, 2007... When the chancellor Gordon Brown announced changes to the VCT rules in the 2006 Budget the repercussions were most negatively felt by AIM VCTs. Increasing the minimum holding period from three to five years seemed sensible; reducing the income...

Time to go specialist.
February 1, 2007... A s from 6 April 2006, companies have only qualified for investment from new money raised by venture capital trusts (VCTs) if they have gross assets of AGBP7m or less. Previously the gross assets test was AGBP15m. Her Majesty's Revenue and...

Tax breaks down.
February 1, 2007... Byline: Laverne Hadaway considers the likely consequences of the Chancellor's latest changes to the VCT tax regime In April 2006, VCTs entered their third tax regime with three major changes. Firstly, the income tax break was reduced from...

The ins and outs.
February 1, 2007... In an increasingly entrepreneurial world, TV reality shows such as Dragon's Den open up the possibilities of venture capital and how, potentially, any business can expand through this route. The reality is, of course, far more considered. ...

Free for all.
February 1, 2007... Byline: Government plans for generic advice AIFA has welcomed a move by the government to create a generic financial advice service, accessible to all, by 2012. AIFA has broadly welcomed the announcement that first steps have been...

Unquoted risk: perception vs reality.
February 1, 2007... Unquoted investments are often, but mistakenly, seen as representing higher risk than AIM investments. This is mainly because they have no quoted pricing mechanism and do not have an imposed reporting structure. However, it is possible to make...

November rain.
February 1, 2007... Byline: IMA reports autumn slump in ISA sales Net ISA sales in November 2006 were AGBP82m lower than they had been a year earlier, despite an overall increase in ISA investment for the year, figures show. A report by the Investment...

Change the track.
February 1, 2007... Byline: Tracker fund performance off course Tracker FUNDS are failing to track their indices accurately and mostly per-formed worse than the average actively managed fund in their sectors, figures show. A survey of trackers in this...

Potentially exempt.
February 1, 2007... Byline: HMRC reconsiders change to bare trusts The government is to review recent changes that effectively introduced a stealth tax on gifts to minors through absolute trusts. In January, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) confirmed to Skandia...

On the breadline.
February 1, 2007... Byline: New calculator highlights pension plight A new personal inflation calculator gives a stark indication of the unequal impact of inflation on pensioners. The calculator was produced by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and...