Money Management articles from July 2006

Money Management archives from July 2006

White Paper voucher calls.
July 1, 2006... Scottish Equitable is calling on the Government to introduce vouchers for advice to help subsidise financial advice for the proposed National Pensions Saving Scheme (NPSS). The group argues that NPSS should not be a non-advice scheme and...

Second payout for split cap losses.
July 1, 2006... A second round of compensation payments to split capital investors will be made later in the year, Fund Distribution Limited (FDL) has confirmed. FDL is the body charged with administering the payouts to compensate investors for losses of...

VATman foiled.
July 1, 2006... UK fund managers could be eligible for a refund following a landmark European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling on VAT in fund administration. On 4 May 2006, in the case of Abbey National and Inscape Investment Fund versus HM Revenue & Customs...

Moving the goalposts.
July 1, 2006... Fund managers migrating to the new collective investment scheme (COLL) sourcebook rules are taking the opportunity to alter the investment remits on their funds. Jupiter is the latest fund manager to make the move, announcing that the...

Viable or liable?
July 1, 2006... The UK has the highest incidence of pension scheme deficits in Europe, but less than half of the country's schemes have embraced liability driven investments (LDIs), research has revealed. The UK emerged as the country with the most...

Winterthur sale looms.
July 1, 2006... Credit Suisse is understood to be in secret talks over a possible sale of subsidiary Winterthur to Axa Insurance. According to reports, Axa has been given two weeks to look over the figures, but neither Credit Suisse nor Axa were willing to...

Going south.
July 1, 2006... Annuity rates have tumbled further this year with a new survey recording drops of more than to 4% on 2005. According to figures from Defaqto, men's impaired annuity rates showed the largest fall, down from 7.71% on average in 2005 for a...

Protection in hot water.
July 1, 2006... The industry is being urged to back life protection products as a report shows that protection sales declined sharply last year. Individual term assurance (TA) failed to bounce back in 2005, the research from Swiss Re found, recording a...

Blast from the past.
July 1, 2006... The introduction of depolarisation last year has left many tied agents with a wider choice of business models. In the July 1981 issue of Money Management, providers were also debating the future of tied agents within the marketplace. The...

Silverton to host industry Oscars.
July 1, 2006... Money Management can reveal that BBC newsreader Kate Silverton is to host the 2006 Financial Planner of the Year Awards. Silverton trained as a journalist with BBC Look North before moving to Tyne Tees Television and eventually to the BBC...

Coming in from the cold.
July 1, 2006... Back in the good old days of polarisation, life was simple: advisers were either independent or tied to one product provider. The Treasury, however, decided that this was restricting consumers' choice and insisted that the FSA dismantle it. A...

Cover with a twist.
July 1, 2006... Compass Underwriting is hoping to set itself apart from the competition with the launch of a mortgage payment protection insurance product (MPPI) with a no claims bonus discount. The online product, launched in conjunction with Assurant...

Apollo launches.
July 1, 2006... Octopus Asset Management has launched the first venture capital trust (VCT) of the tax year, Apollo 1 & 2, since Gordon Brown lowered the income tax relief available from 40% to 30%. The company plans to employ a low risk approach by...

All REIT now.
July 1, 2006... Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) has launched a Multi Manager Real Estate Securities Fund and a UK Real Estate Fund. The multi manager offering, which is a manager of managers fund, will invest primarily in globally diverse...

Aiming high.
July 1, 2006... Rathbone has added a high income fund to its portfolio of funds. The proposed equity allocation is 65% equities with a UK and FTSE 100 bias, 30% property and 5% cash, with no restriction on geographic areas. The target yield has been...

Discretionary trusts.
July 1, 2006... As discussed in last month's Tax Spotlight, we are likely to see a dramatic increase in the use of discretionary trusts as a consequence of the Budget amendments. Last month we considered the inheritance tax (IHT) treatment of discretionary...

Excess cover.
July 1, 2006... WPA has devised a 'one excess' private medical insurance (PMI) plan for couples and families. The product, called 1XS, covers a maximum of two adults (aged 18 and over) and any number of children, with the excess payable capped at...

Safe as houses?
July 1, 2006... The Government's plans for Home Information Packs (HIPs) continue to generate controversy. More and more organisations are expressing their fears about the potential effect that HIPs may have on the housing market. They fear that the prospect...

The White Paper.
July 1, 2006... The White Paper 'Security in retirement: towards a new pension system', published on 13 June 2006, is presented as a bold, historic settlement, a resolution of the pensions challenge, providing a trusted pensions system, in a reform lasting...

Mind your own new business.
July 1, 2006... New business contribution is a key measure of future prospects for an industry. Judging by the renewed levels of pensions and life business in 2005, the UK life and pensions industry has reason for optimism. A regulation shake-up and...

Depolarisation doubts.
July 1, 2006... The Treasury has given the strongest signal yet that depolarisation is not working, just a year after it was introduced. The head of savings and investment products at the Treasury, Sue Lewis, admitted in a surprise comment that the...

Past masters.
July 1, 2006... Every advert you see for financial performance must contain words to the effect that "Past performance is not a guide to the future". But is this strictly true? Do some managers consistently outperform their rivals, and do funds languishing at...

Haven't we seen this before?
July 1, 2006... To the cynics amongst us dAjA vu could be French for pensions reform. Are the much heralded Member Nominated Trustee (MNT) Regulations just another case in point? The answer is a resounding, unequivocal "maybe"! The regulations laid before...

Stakeholder: 5 years on.
July 1, 2006... No sooner had the Government released its much-anticipated White Paper on the future of the country's state pension system than the industry appeared to be wiping its hands of stakeholder pensions. Just weeks before the paper's publication, the...

Prudence pays.
July 1, 2006... The cautious managed sector has grown by leaps and bounds since its introduction in 1999 by the Investment Management Association (IMA). The growth in the past five years of multi-manager and target or total return funds in particular has...

The tortoise and the hare.
July 1, 2006... Although most people in the financial services industry are calling May's stockmarket drop just a correction, investors in cautious managed funds are no doubt feeling vindicated for not jumping into funds with higher equity weightings. While...

All my worldly goods.
July 1, 2006... The use of discretionary nil-rate band (NRB) Will trusts has now almost become second nature to professional advisers for their married clients. However, the Finance Bill 2006 has a significant impact on the use of trusts, and "traditional"...

Work hard for the money.
July 1, 2006... The first distribution fund was launched by Axa in 1979. And for about 20 years after that, nothing happened. There were a handful of further launches here and there, a few investors decided to chance their arm, but by and large the...

An answer to volatility?
July 1, 2006... No one can have escaped the recent downturn of the UK stock market since Friday 12 May 2006. Bull markets do not last forever and the current one has had a run of 33 months now. History shows that bulls tend to run for an average of 25 months...

How cautious is your fund?
July 1, 2006... The sudden jolt experienced by markets in May has been an uncomfortable reminder that equities are still subject to gravity. Investors, intoxicated by stock market gains of almost 65% over the past three years, have recovered their appetite for...

Equity release: round table.
July 1, 2006... Participants: Steve Groves, chief financial officer of Partnership Assurance; Brendan Kearns, product development manager, equity release at Norwich Union; Mike Lewis, equity release operations manager at NHFA; and Frank McCann, head of...

FAS drags its feet.
July 1, 2006... The Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS), set up by the Government to aid those with failed occupational pension schemes, has so far cost more than AGBP1.9m to run but has paid out just AGBP40,000. The scheme officially opened in September...

Heading off misselling.
July 1, 2006... Equity release is rapidly becoming a mainstream financial planning vehicle both for advisers and homeowners. The market is responding with rapid developments in products, such as Prudential's flexible drawdown scheme and Partnership's impaired...

The double edged sword.
July 1, 2006... In the year 2000, the average UK life expectancy was 77. By 2051, it will be 88 and the number of people aged over 65 will grow by 81% from 9.3m in 2000 to 16.8m in 2051. It is worth looking beyond the numbers to consider what this ageing...

Revolution by design.
July 1, 2006... Although lifetime mortgages have tended to be more popular than home reversions, the introduction of mortgage regulation in October 2004 has not pushed consumers further towards that equity release product. Although regulation provides a safety...

Facing up to the challenge.
July 1, 2006... At long last the Government has published its white paper on the future of pension provision. There were no real shocks in the proposals, with Lord Turner noting that the White Paper contained 90-95% of what his commission had recommended. As...

In the driver's seat.
July 1, 2006... The growing pensioner savings gap and the amount of wealth tied up in housing will drive demand for equity release products. People are living longer and staying healthier and active for much longer than ever before. The difference between...

REITs face the heat.
July 1, 2006... Fresh fears have emerged that not enough is being done to make real estate investment trust (REIT) conversion attractive to residential property groups. MPs raised concerns over the issue at a Standing Committee debate over the new laws...

Making resolutions.
July 1, 2006... Resolution Life is set to buy Abbey's closed life funds for AGBP3.6bn -" a deal that will propel the group into the FTSE 100 and mark the first time that a closed life consolidator has entered the top share index. Resolution is expected to...

Standard Life flotation.
July 1, 2006... Standard Life policyholders are likely to see their demutualisation windfalls reduced thanks to turbulent market conditions. The company is due to float in July and originally suggested that share prices might range between 240p and 290p a...

FSA ups the ante.
July 1, 2006... When the FSA published details of its final fees and levies for 2006/07 for regulated firms, it showed a significant rise in fee rates for more firms than had been anticipated. Based on its consultation paper release in February, the FSA...

LSE set free?
July 1, 2006... The London Stock Exchange (LSE) might not fall under UK jurisdiction if it were to be taken over by a foreign company, it has been revealed. Regulators have admitted that as long as it remains a UK exchange, the LSE will continue to fall...

Not a wind up.
July 1, 2006... The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) is pledging to crack down on lengthy occupational pension wind ups as part of a campaign to get tough on the schemes. June Mulroy, executive director of delivery at the FOS, told delegates at a recent...