We’ve just published the key findings from our annual Financial Planning Survey in the latest edition of Financial Planning Today magazine.

The latest Investment Association figures, covering fund sales in the second quarter, reveal some interesting movements but also highlight the blunders mainstream investors make over and over again due to the herd instinct.

Over the past 10 years I’ve seen too many governments treat pension savers, particularly middle to high earner, as tax-dodging lepers.

The move to Strong Customer Authentication in the online financial world is a topic few are getting excited about but it will change life profoundly for most people in the UK.

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me. When I'm 64.” 

There is a common mis-conception that Defined Benefit transfers are the scourge of society, an inherent evil that must be stamped out. This is far from true.

Until now Financial Planners have treated the threat from robo-advisers as a limited one - and they have been right to do so - but that attitude may need to change, according to a recent report.

If you’d told me 10 years ago that Paraplanners would don warpaint once a year and happily gather to chew over technical issues in a giant teepee in Northants I might have suggested you’d been smoking the peace pipe a bit too long.

St James’s Place Wealth Management has recently been hammered in the press, particularly by the Times, over its incentive schemes. At the risk of being hung, drawn and quartered I believe the criticism has been over-done.

I must confess I always had reservations about the Pension Freedoms when they were introduced by George Osborne in 2015 and the latest FCA figures seem to back up comments I made at the time.