Article by Christina
February 2024 news from Christina Clegg your local wealth manager:
- 75% of women reported that they would prefer their employer to select their pension funds rather than having the ability to do it for themselves, according to the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association.
- January to March are the worst months of the year for worries and financial stress. Mental Health referrals are 40% higher at this time of the year than any other.
- 6,700 local wealth manger firms across the UK were deauthorised from the FCA register in the last six months. That’s a reduction of 7% in the number of firms in 2023. In total almost 15,000 advisers left the profession coming off the FCA register.
- According to research by wealth manager Tech provider 24/7, the average pension pot for people agreed between 50 and 59 is £223,000. The average ISA holding for people aged between 70 and 79 is £110,000. That’s not the UK average of course, just the average for client’s money held on 24/7 serviced platforms. So don’t panic!
- The number of financial adviser and local wealth mangers has fallen to an all-time low of 28,000. It’s estimated that another 50,000 are needed to meet current demands for advice.
- Working from Home is estimated to cost the average worker over £2,000 in bills during the Winter months. Double the costs in Summer.
- It’s been reported that data breaches exposed the financial data of over 50 million people last year. No wonder the number of scams is on the rise.
- 25% of insurance policies in the UK have been cancelled in the last 12 months.
- HSBC has been fined £57 million by the banking regulator. The fine is for failing to identify that customers funds were protected by the Financial Services Protection Scheme (FSCS) between 2015 and 2022. The failure covered over £4.5 billion in customer deposits.
- The Bank of England held the base rate at 5.25% for the fourth month in a row.
- A report by the International Longevity Centre has forecast that state pension age will need to rise to 71 by 2050. That means that anyone born after 1970 would have to work until they were in their 70’s. Time to take retirement advice from your local wealth manager?
- House prices have increased for the fourth consecutive month, but only by 2.5% over the last 12 months.
- 8 million people will now pay higher rate tax at 40%.
- Meanwhile the big four UK Banks are set to make profits of almost £50 billion between them.
- The number of house repossessions was 1,040 in the last quarter of 2023. But that was only half the number in the same period in 2019. However, the number of mortgages in arrears increased by 7% over the same period.
- Inflation remained at 4% in the 12 months to January 2024.
- Nextwealth expects the numbers of clients using a local wealth manager will increase by 30% over the next few years as a result of improvements in technology solutions.
- Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo is allegedly being sued for over $1 billion in relation to and his offer of personalised NFT’s (Non-Fungible Tokens), through crypto trader Binance, which are now apparently worthless. It seems that over £40 billion in NFT’s have been sold around the world (not all relating to Ronaldo of course) and none of them are worth anything.
