Article by Christina
March 2024 news from Christina Clegg your local Pension Adviser:
- St James Place announced that they were setting aside over £400 million to deal with complaints against their network of local pension advisers. Their share price went down by 30% on the news.
- The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has been criticised by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) for not meeting its requirements to submit information in a timely manner under Freedom of Information requests. Apparently in 65% of cases they failed to comply.
- The Pension Regulator announced that the number of workers saving for a pension through the auto enrolment scheme had topped 11 million. In total, 20 million workers in the UK are now regularly saving into a pension for the future.
- In his latest budget, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced a further 2 pence cut to National Insurance to take effect from 6th This follows on the back of the 2 pence cut in November. So, 4 pence (or one third) in the last tax year.
- The budget also forecast growth over the year of 0.8%.
- The Chancellor also introduced the new British Individual Savings Account (ISA). With a limit of £5,000 per year this type of ISA will invest solely in UK equities to boost growth. The ISA will be available to savers in addition to the existing £20,000 a year ISA savings limit.
- HMRC has reported that there is currently £4.3 billion in unpaid tax which it intends to collect through private debt collection agencies.
- Barclays announced that it is stepping up local pension adviser recruitment as it starts to get back into the advice market, which it came out of over 10 years ago. Other Banks are starting to follow suit. The FCA review into the advice and guidance boundary may see further growth in pension adviser numbers. Let’s hope so.
- Sadly, mortgage arrears have reached their highest level for seven years, with over £20 billion worth of property value in arrears.
- The Financial Ombudsman Service (FoS) has increased its maximum compensation payout to £430,000 for any claims arising after April 2019. That’s great news for local pension adviser
- clients who are now even better protected.
- The UK economy grew by 0.2% in January.
- Inflation fell to 3.4% in February.
- The Bank of England held the base rate at 5.25%.
- MyBnk is launching a campaign to target financial education for young people from 5 to 25. A new website Money Ready has been set up to help young people learn about money and to protect themselves from scams.
- The Parliamentary and Health service Ombudsman published their final report on the government’s handling of the change in women’s state pension age and concluded that they were due compensation of between £3 billion and £10 billion. This follows a campaign by the Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) started back in 2015. The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) are now considering their response to the report.
- St James Place have announced a sponsorship with the Sky Arts TV channel. They also launched a mainstream TV advert promotion financial advice.
