Article by Phil
Here are some of the updates we’ve read about in March:
- The FCA has introduced new caps on the fees Claims Management Companies can charge clients from 1st March just as we reported way back in January last year.
- According to research by Lloyds Bank, 80% of over 55-year-olds in the UK don’t have a Lasting Power of Attorney in place. Almost a third thought that you could only put an LPA in place after someone became ill. More education is needed.
- Fraud Warning – please be aware that there has been a report of a cloned firm being registered by Companies House in the name of UK Aberdeen Investment Company – this has been reported by Abrdn to the FCA and clients should be careful when carrying out their due diligence. Apparently this cloned firm is registered at a London flat where over 180 other cloned companies are registered. You would think that something could be done about this.
- Fraud warning – the FCA has acted to close down the website germangilts.com which was offering returns on German gilts of between 3% and 9% but was a scam operator.
- On the same theme, researchers have looked at the names which are the most impersonated in e mail scams. So here are the ones to watch out for: 1. Amazon 2. DHL 3. DocuSign 4. PayPal 5. LinkedIn, so please be careful
- The Chancellor announced in his Spring Statement that pension receipts were expected to increase to £1.7 billion in the coming year. This is tax paid on withdrawing funds from personal pensions. The increase seems to be as a result of more people accessing their pensions earlier under the 2015 pension freedoms changes.
- The government announced that the triple lock will be re-instated for the remainder of the parliamentary term. That means that pensioners are in for a bumper rise, but not until April next year. The rise could be 5.6% of even higher.
- The FCA have announced that they only conducted 6 investigations into the performance of the Senior Management Certification Regime (SMCR) launched in 2018. That’s out of 48,000 regulated firms.
- Research by Vanguard reveals that 90% of clients using so called “robo advice” expect to switch to human advice at some point in the future. Only 5% said that they would only ever use technology. Just shows the human touch is by no means dead!
If you need any help or advice from the “best financial advisers”please do not hesitate to contact us.
