Money Management articles from September 2005

Money Management archives from September 2005

Scorn on the CoB.
September 1, 2005... THE FSA HAS DENIED THAT the rebirth of pension term assurance (PTA) on A-Day will create new mis-selling issues, insisting that regulation of the product will not change. This is despite warnings that the failure to regulate PTA under...

Mind the gap.
September 1, 2005... MORE THAN A THIRD OF parents in the UK have no life cover, according to a recent survey conducted by Scottish Widows. The research, looking into the current extent of the UK protection gap, also revealed that one in five parents has no life...

Expo imminent.
September 1, 2005... SOME OF THE MOST respected names in personal finance are set to explore the sector's biggest issues at this years' Financial Adviser Expo. The event, to be held on 22 September at the Royal Horticultural Halls in London and on 4 October at...

Packed off to 'loot camp.
September 1, 2005... ALL PARENTS worry about whether their children will be prepared to handle whatever the world throws at them. For the offspring of the well off, learning how to manage the family fortune is a necessary part of their education. But with...

Income Bonds - Contract killing?
September 1, 2005... KEYDATA INVESTMENT Services has launched the Secure Income Bond, which aims to pay 7.5% annual income over the five-year term (or 43.5% in total) with a full return of capital at maturity. The bond is sterling denominated but listed on the...

Mysterious ways.
September 1, 2005... INTERMEDIARIES COULD face FSA enforcement action after neglecting to implement new rules aimed at eradicating mis-selling. The regulator conducted a mystery shopping exercise in April and May this year to gauge the degree to which companies...

Whole lotta life.
September 1, 2005... A NEW GUARANTEED WHOLE of life plan from Liverpool Victoria has given IFAs another inheritance tax (IHT) planning option. The LifeTime+ product guarantees premiums for the length of the policy and pays a lump sum. The product also has...

Natural born drillers.
September 1, 2005... OCEANIC ASSET Management is offering UK private investors the chance to invest in Australian natural resources. The UK-domiciled ACD Australian Natural Resources OEIC, managed by Nicholas Boyd-Matthews and Stuart Bell, is benchmarked against...

BWiser post A-Day.
September 1, 2005... BARNETT WADDINGHAM has launched a modeller and report service to help IFAs analyse the likely impact on clients of pensions simplification. BWiser, a web-based system, looks at pension arrangements and individuals' position at A-Day to...

Investment superfunds.
September 1, 2005... AS THE FTSE100 CLIMBED CLOSE to 7,000 at the very end of 1999, investors piled into the market convinced that the upward trend would continue. But the index peaked at 6,930 in December 1999 and reached a low of 3,287 in March 2003. Graph 1...

False premises.
September 1, 2005... THE PERSONAL INVESTMENT Authority (PIA) announced the issuing of mortgage endowment reprojection letters in January 1999 within Regulatory Update 62 (RU62). Originally an Association of British Insurers' (ABI) initiative, these have since been...

Harsh, but fair?
September 1, 2005... THE HIGH COURT UPHELD THE Financial Ombudsman Service's (FOS) decision in IFG. IFG Financial Services, whose head office is in Cambridgeshire, was found to have wrongly advised a client that certain recommended investments were medium risk...

IFAs quit pensions advice.
September 1, 2005... A LEADING IFA has threatened to stop offering pensions advice because of the potential comeback from clients decades after the sale. This is despite the FSA proposals to drop RU64 which requires IFAs to explain in writing to a client why the...

LIFETIME MORTGAGES Empty promises.
September 1, 2005... NATIONAL COUNTIES Building Society has relaunched an open-ended drawdown lifetime mortgage 10 months after ditching its previous flexible drawdown scheme. The society formerly offered an equity release mortgage allowing borrowers to take an...

Europe and the IFA.
September 1, 2005... FEW PEOPLE REALISE THAT, OVER the past five years, 39 EU financial directives have been adopted by the UK and other member states, perhaps because many will only be passed into national legislation over the next two to three years. The FSA's...

Tax relief on your mortgage?
September 1, 2005... MANY READERS WILL FONDLY remember the days before April 2000, when tax relief was available on mortgages under mortgage interest relief at source (MIRAS). In his Budget speech on Tuesday 9 March 1999, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, announced the...

Pensions take up residence.
September 1, 2005... THE FINANCIAL SERVICES WORLD appears to be split over the potential impact of the inclusion of residential property in SIPPS. On the one hand, firms such as Hargreaves Lansdown predict "a significant boost to some segments of the housing...

A certain ratio.
September 1, 2005... IN AN AGE OF TRANSPARENCY AND TREATING Customers Fairly initiatives, investors could be forgiven for assuming that fund providers told them how much they charge. But this is not necessarily the case, with companies obliged to disclose initial...

Deadline delay.
September 1, 2005... THE FSA HAS ADMITTED that its new online reporting service has not been able to cope with the number of IFAs trying to complete returns, as the regulator extended the inaugural deadline by a month. A large number of IFAs have been left...

Shore thing.
September 1, 2005... OFFSHORE INVESTMENT IS USUALLY associated with the tax advantages that it offers. Various offshore havens exploit their tax free status to attract investment, and this is perceived as the main selling point of investments abroad. Any gains are...

Does every little help?
September 1, 2005... W hen pondering which type of baked beans to buy in my local supermarket, there is never anyone available to advise me which type is best. I can base my selection on quality or just price, but either way I have to live with the consequences of...

Only a click away.
September 1, 2005... A RECENT SURVEY OF MORE THAN 400 IFA firms uncovered a shocking statistic of technology usage and attitudes towards IT within the financial advice industry. Less than half of those IFA firms quizzed for the poll used online services of any type...

The virtual watchdog.
September 1, 2005... INTEGRATED REGULATORY reporting (IRR) was introduced following the Financial Services Authority's (FSA) 2003/2004 Plan and Budget commitment in a bid to streamline the existing, mainly paper-based, reporting requirements for adviser firms....

Gateway to e-business.
September 1, 2005... COMPETITION HAS BEEN hotting up among technology suppliers in the financial services arena to the extent that IFAs are now being literally bombarded by information from firms keen to attract their custom. Software groups, hardware groups and...

Asian fund seeks income.
September 1, 2005... SCHRODER INVESTMENT Management launched the Schroder Oriental Income Fund at the end of July; shares of the investment trust are now trading on the London Stock Exchange. The fund aims to take advantage of dividend growth in the region to...

Banking on e-commerce.
September 1, 2005... THE UNSPOKEN QUESTION THAT hovers behind any discussion of extranets -- or indeed the internet -- is: Does e-commerce actually work? Billions of pounds have been poured into online business propositions and so-called time saving online...

Out with the old.
September 1, 2005... THE INDUSTRY HAS TAKEN A dramatic turn over the past few years. There have been unprecedented developments not only with regards to regulation governing the industry but perhaps even more so in the adoption of technology across every business...

Keeping it real time.
September 1, 2005... THE EASY PART OF GETTING online is making the decision to do it -- actually seeing the process through can seem a lot more daunting. The sheer choice of IT solutions available to financial advisers can be intimidating on first glance, with not...

Plummeting persistency.
September 1, 2005... THOSE CONCERNED WITH THE FSA's credibility should consider their actions in publishing a damning report on persistency without a press release, in writing a consultation paper about doing away with the RU64 limitation on charges without any...

Getting your money's worth.
September 1, 2005... ALL EYES HAVE BEEN ON THE financial advice process and the industry's commission system this year, as the issue of ongoing advice has been brought to the fore. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) published its consultation paper,...

Pizza man fails to deliver.
September 1, 2005... AS THE entrepreneur behind Pizza Express, Hugh Osmond said that he had experience in making the customer king and planned to extend that treatment to the policyholders of the closed life funds acquired by his consolidating company Pearl Group....

Balancing act.
September 1, 2005... REMEMBER THOSE HALCYON days of the late '80s and '90s, a time of unprecedented equity market gains, when the only perceived risk for a client was being out of the markets? Fond memories of double-digit bonus rates from with profit bonds have...

The great differentiator.
September 1, 2005... MOST FINANCIAL ADVISERS realise that technology is key to improved client relationships, robust and efficient audit and compliance trails while reducing business costs. New services are flooding IFAs' offices, fuelled by an improved...

Power tools.
September 1, 2005... PORTFOLIO PLANNING TOOLS have become a major weapon in the IFA's armoury, providing a scientific means by which to analyse portfolios and identify the actions needed to give a reasonable chance of achieving objectives. As with all new...

Keeping it all wrapped up.
September 1, 2005... THE INTRODUCTION OF WRAP accounts has transformed the financial advice process: slashing administration costs and allowing advisers to concentrate on their core business of advising clients. Wraps first appeared in the UK 18 months ago in...

PPF levy expected to skyrocket.
September 1, 2005... ONCERN ABOUT THE funding of the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) is growing with the board indicating that the levy for the 2006/2007 financial year will be higher than the AGBP300m initial fee. The increase has been attributed to increasing...

Calls for funding.
September 1, 2005... WITH BERKELEY BERRY Birch facing enforcement action from the FSA over its AGBP12m capital deficit, it is looking for financial support, possibly via new investors or a merger. The network faces competition from other networks seeking deals....

Potential IHT loophole closed.
September 1, 2005... THE EXCITEMENT OVER A-Day changes -- and the predicted boom in self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) that is set to follow -- is dying down in the face reality. Helping to dampen enthusiasm is Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs'(HMRC)...

Stats life.
September 1, 2005... THE ABI IS LAUNCHING A new investment data reporting regime for life and pensions providers to level the playing field between funds. The new rules, which will affect the statistics published in Money Management (and all other publications...

Chop and change.
September 1, 2005... THREE LIFE OFFICES HAVE cut average market value reductions, but warned that some with profits payouts would continue to fall. Norwich Union, Scottish Widows and Friends Provident all reduced their MVRs although annual bonuses have remained...

Death and taxes.
September 1, 2005... IN THE LEAD-UP TO A-DAY, most of the focus has been on the rule changes that will increase the opportunities available to pension schemes. But few have noticed that the devil may be in the detail, according to Alan Smith, a director of First...

Taking stock.
September 1, 2005... GREED IS THE INVESTOR'S besetting sin. Greed plus ignorance effectively drives out common sense -- which is why bankers have the yachts and not their customers. Effects of 2000-2003 The sharp drop in prices with the bursting of the...

File not found.
September 1, 2005... IT MANAGERS WITHIN SMALL TO medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lose five working days each year finding and restoring business data that have been lost due to either human error or IT failure. And more than 60m working days are put in jeopardy...

Risky business.
September 1, 2005... IN THEORY, ATTITUDE TO RISK should always be gauged before investment decisions are made. In practice, however, this assessment often has boiled down to little more than an adviser asking an investor to rate their attitude to risk on a scale of...