Money Management articles from June 2005

Money Management archives from June 2005

Progress update.
June 1, 2005... ROYAL LIVER IS SET TO launch added features to its income protection (IP) proposition that it maintains will help close the gap on critical illness sales. The additions to the online Progress service, launched last autumn, will be available in...

Death and taxes.
June 1, 2005... TAX EXPERTS ARE cautioning against schemes using offshore trusts to avoid inheritance tax charges as the Inland Revenue launches an IHT clamp down. The Revenue, now known as HM Revenue & Customs, is understood to have stepped up its IHT...

Back to basics.
June 1, 2005... THE PERSONAL FINANCE Society is considering launching a basic advice examination amid fears that Sandler suite sales advisers would not be adequately qualified. There is currently no FSA requirement for those selling stakeholder products...

Fives Alive.
June 1, 2005... WITH LIVERPOOL'S European adventures in Istanbul done and dusted, just one major trophy remains to be won this season. The fourth annual Money Management Finance Fives tournament will take place on 1 July. The football world will be on...

Winning caps.
June 1, 2005... FTSE GROUP IS LAUNCHING two 5% cap indices next month: the FTSE Cap 100 5% index and the FTSE Cap All Share 5% index. The indices, which were set to go live on 20 June at the time of writing, are designed to ensure that no one stock has a...

The artful pensioner.
June 1, 2005... INSTEAD OF PROMOTING stakeholder pensions as the solution for those that usually do not make any pension provisions, a New York tech millionaire has created an innovative pension fund for a group of workers synonymous with financial...

Financial Planner of the Year Awards.
June 1, 2005... PREPARATIONS ARE WELL under way for the personal finance event of the year, the Money Management Financial Planner Awards. The dinner, to be held at the Dorchester on Thursday 13 October, will be hosted by former BBC and ITN political...

Blast from the past.
June 1, 2005... IN JUNE 1980, MM's WITH profits endowment survey asked what low-cost endowments had to offer the borrower in a time of record mortgage interest rates. The survey outlined that the higher the mortgage interest rate, the less attractive the...

LET's GET PERSONAL.
June 1, 2005... Friends Provident has developed a new range of individual pensions, which it is calling The Personal Range. The range will include individual pensions and individual stakeholder pensions, as well as transfer value accounts, protected rights...

A rose by any other name.
June 1, 2005... Although it's been 10 years since the Lautro expense charges regime ended, problems caused by this daft rule are still coming to light. Compensation claims are usually agreed where risk of a shortfall in endowment payouts wasn't explained at...

Ready for A-Day.
June 1, 2005... Exactly 15 years after Winterthur became the first SIPP provider in the UK, it has launched its Winterthur Life SIPP with remote control access. In preparation for A-Day, the SIPP offers access to a range of investments, through an online...

First long/short equity fund.
June 1, 2005... Merrill Lynch Investment Managers has launched the first long/short equity unit trust in the UK, the Absolute Alpha Fund. The fund takes advantage of the new UCITS III regulations; unit trusts have always been able to make conventional...

High street bonds.
June 1, 2005... Two of the UK's biggest household names have hit the capital protected bond trail. Marks & Spencer's Guaranteed Capital Bond promises 120% of the average rise -- if any -- in the FTSE 100 and the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 after five years, and...

Classic comeback.
June 1, 2005... FRIENDLY SOCIETIES CAN TRACE THEIR ORIGINS BACK to Roman times and the model for saving has existed more or less unchanged ever since. The concept of individuals benefiting from pooled risk or savings really caught on with the advent of the...

Winds of change.
June 1, 2005... INVESTMENT TRUSTS HAVE HAD A rough few years. Hit like all equity investments by the bear market, the industry has also been dogged by scandal stemming from the split capital sector (for the full split cap story, see ). As compensation...

Tricks of the exchange trade.
June 1, 2005... EXCHANGE TRADED FUNDS (ETFs) will sit alongside unit trusts and investment trusts as a mainstream investment option within five years, research from Morgan Stanley has predicted. And while IFAs can be forgiven for asking how this could be the...

Treating customers fairly.
June 1, 2005... The reputation of the personal finance industry has been blighted in recent years by a number of 'scandals', including the wide scale misselling of endowment mortgages, personal pensions and precipice bonds. Unfortunately, these events have...

End of an era.
June 1, 2005... AFTER 16 YEARS, INCLUDING four years of consultation and discussion, the end of the polarisation regime has come. After years of saying that consumers did not understand polarisation and could not tell the difference between an independent and...

High and dry.
June 1, 2005... TENS OF THOUSANDS OF mortgage endowment policyholders are surrendering their policies without considering the consequences of losing life cover late in life. IFAs estimate that tens if not hundreds of thousands of those surrendering...

Come together.
June 1, 2005... THE ORGANISATION FOR Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Commission are both promoting ways to further integrate the European Union financial markets through standardised products and protection for investors. The...

Taking stock - June 05.
June 1, 2005... The lack of any settled direction within the markets has certainly encouraged investment managers to tout the advantages of asset allocation. The cynical might regard this new found 'skill' as an excuse for increased fees at a time when...

BIGGER PICTURE COMES INTO FOCUS.
June 1, 2005... Lifetime has finally launched its long-awaited wrap platform, branded The Bigger Picture. The service features over 1,000 funds from 43 providers, including Fidelity, Artemis and Gartmore. Manager of manager, fund of funds and tracker funds are...

Pensions spotlight: Smaller firms are key to overcoming pensions crisisi.
June 1, 2005... The smaller firms sector in the UK is a major employer, yet it is the sector where employer pension contributions are most lacking. As such, it has a potentially huge role to play in overcoming the pension crisis, as the work place is where...

Mortgage spotlight: Out of the shadows?
June 1, 2005... While much of the mainstream mortgage market is in the doldrums, lenders appear to be pinning their hopes on the adverse credit market, more commonly known as 'sub prime' mortgages. The past few months have seen new products and revamped ranges...

Working with the watchdog.
June 1, 2005... THE PRIVATE MEDICAL INSURANCE (PMI) market is at a crossroads. Falling sales over recent years have prompted product innovation and the introduction of statutory regulation by the FSA of both the mortgage and general insurance markets has led...

Switch way next?
June 1, 2005... THOSE INVOLVED IN PRIVATE medical insurance (PMI) in the individual market are extremely likely to have come across the following scenario: A 63-year-old man has been paying into his policy since the age of 37. His premiums have steadily risen,...

Leading the way.
June 1, 2005... GLOBAL COMPETITION DROVE many UK employers to downsize their workforces in the 1990s. The skilled staff who stayed became more vital to the business and, in a tight labour market, extending the employee benefits offered was seen as one move...

Great expectations.
June 1, 2005... THE PRIVATE HEALTHCARE MARKET is undergoing some big changes, particularly in the way that healthcare is delivered and this looks set to continue. The Government has committed to a huge investment in the NHS. It is offering patients more...

In sickness and in health?
June 1, 2005... INDIVIDUALS ARE MORE determined than ever to take responsibility for their own wellbeing. A study by health research experts at the Dr Foster unit at Imperial College tracked the views of the UK's GPs and found that people in the UK wanted...

PAFS PLAN NO PIFFLE.
June 1, 2005... The Pension Annuity Friendly Society (PAFS) has delivered a much needed shot in the arm for the prefunded long term care market by remodelling its flagship product. The development of Care Prepared -- an evolution of the Flexible Care...

Testing times.
June 1, 2005... WHILE THE CHARTERED Institute (CII) feels that the new Certificate of Financial Planning (CFP) embraces the best qualities of the Financial Planning Certificate regime that it replaced in an 'updated and enhanced form', Money Management writers...

Honesty should be the only policy.
June 1, 2005... EARLIER THIS YEAR, STANDARD LIFE became the first mainstream UK life office for more than five years to publish statistics on the life and critical illness claims that it had paid -- as well as those that it did not. While some have seen this...

Taking centre stage.
June 1, 2005... EACH GENERAL ELECTION BRINGS the state of the National Health Service (NHS) to the fore and the 2005 poll was no exception to the rule. Healthcare, tax and immigration are three of the perennial political issues that get right to the heart of...

The quest for uniformity.
June 1, 2005... IT IS NOW A WELL-KNOWN FACT that income protection (IP) does not sell as well as it should. It is increasingly losing ground to its arch rivals, critical illness cover (CIC); accident, sickness and unemployment (ASU); and mortgage payment...

Rover and out?
June 1, 2005... THOUSANDS OF MG ROVER workers have suffered weeks of confusion over fears that they could lose their pensions. The company went into administration in April, immediately after the establishment of the Pensions Protection Fund (PPF). But in...

Are you being served?
June 1, 2005... LABOUR'S VICTORY IN 1997 MARKED a turning point for the private medical insurance industry. In the eight years since then, the sector has been battling against a decline in personal PMI take-up, sparked by a series of Governmental decisions....

Fees squeeze.
June 1, 2005... FUND MANAGEMENT groups are penalising retail investors with double-digit fee increases while fund-of-fund managers and stockbrokers are negotiating reduced annual management charges, a City analyst has suggested. Dan Kemp, fund research...

Building site.
June 1, 2005... Subscribers can now access Money Management online at a new web address. Our award-winning surveys, features, product reviews and news will now be available at www.moneymanagementmagazine.com. The entire magazine will appear on the web up...

MPPI under the microscope.
June 1, 2005... AN FSA PLEDGE TO COMBAT the problem of payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling has sparked renewed debate on the matter. The regulator described PPI as a high risk issue and announced that it would be addressing it as a point of urgency....

Cash for questions.
June 1, 2005... To ensure that Money Management keeps delivering exactly what you want, we are conducting an online survey to find out your views on the magazine -- what we are doing right, any topics that you would like to see covered more often and, most...

Severn wonders.
June 1, 2005... THE ASSOCIATION OF IFAs has opted against admitting multi-tied advisers as members, according to director general David Severn. The official word from AIFA is that no decision has yet been made on the matter, but Severn has revealed to Money...