Browse all articles across people aspects of regulation and people development within UK financial services
As we continue on the auto enrolment (AE) journey I have noticed that the audience is changing. It’s not solely a pension audience. It has slowly moved out of the big pension departments, eased through the world of large firms and benefit consultants and emerged directly within the SME sector.
I recently attended a ‘complex prime’ lending roadshow. There were many reasons I wanted to attend, taking into account the many different hats I have to wear for the different businesses I am involved with.
Insights are generally considered a good thing, and discovering something is usually a good thing too – unless, for example, that something is mouse droppings in the pantry or the first signs of a receding hairline. Insights Discovery® is a psychometric profiling tool of immense power.
I think we have all established that 2017 is going to be a busy year, with preparation for GDPR, SMCR and MiFID II. Whilst these projects will have various work streams ensuring that no aspect is missed, there are still some significant business decisions that have to be made before the projects can move forward.
Appropriate and timely training plays a key role at every stage in your employees’ careers. But the most crucial time is arguably in the early days, weeks and months after they join your business. These early inputs set the pattern for the entire time they will spend working for you. Early intervention is the key.
Things are really heating up for our institutional friends in wholesale, and 2017 would appear to be a pivotal year for them in their preparation for both SMCR and MiFID II. That is if you can still be institutional.
In think it was Winston Churchill who said: A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
2016 saw a significant number of consultations across the full range of financial service products and its looks like 2017 is going to follow the trend as the Financial Conduct Authority [‘FCA’] announced, just before Christmas, another ‘market study’ into mortgage advice.
Some people think that because trivial commutation deals with smaller amounts of pension, it should be less complex. This, unfortunately, is not true. Even the HMRC has recognised that guidance on triviality is not easily understandable and that it has caused real difficulties.
For people who have recently completed their education, the prospect of taking an exam creates a potentially unwelcome new demand on their time as they get to grips with a demanding new job. For those who have not taken an exam for some time, it can seem even more daunting.
Many businesses I speak with at this time of year often complain about the length of time the business wheels take to start turning in the New Year. It is often said that January can written off from a new business point of view.
This year the immediate planning issues for most professional pension advisers are likely to be focused on the reduction in the annual and lifetime allowance limits. Two new LTA protection options will be available from April 2014 From 6 April 2014, the standard lifetime allowance limit (LTA) is being reduced to £1.
