It is going to be interesting to see if the Times front page from Friday last week suggesting that the lifetime allowance will be frozen for this Parliament, proves correct.
Unlike some of these types of stories, it reads as credible because the story quotes the Chancellor Rishi Sunak and parts of it have been briefed out by the Treasury.
There are lots of other suggestions in this story notably that corporation tax could also rise significantly.
But it may be the allowance that causes most of the issues for advisers' clients. Of course we will only know for definite on Wednesday.
There is an increasing debate about how to address the debt – with suggestions that Sunak wants to start repairing the public finances. Concerns about volatility in global markets certainly concern the Chancellor.
We saw the US markets begin to get nervous about inflation last week with the possibility of rate rises in the wake of the Biden stimulus. As the Wall Street Journal reports markets were mostly down as bond yields began to look more attractive.
UK gilts of various durations began to rise as well with concerns about the costs of UK borrowing as Bloomberg reports. That might put pressure on to raise revenue or cut spending.
But it is interesting to David Cameron making the case for no tax rises until the pandemic is clearly over. But will the Chancellor pay heed.
And now having looked mostly at the national and newswire sites, a couple of trade stories.
The FCA’s review of MiFID shows fund firms struggling to get data from intermediaries including IFAs – this is the key sentence – “As part of its research, the FCA found all asset managers faced challenges in getting end-client data from intermediaries - including advisers - even when they specifically asked for this information”.
The regulator warns that this could lead to consumer harm, but MiFID and certainly the second iteration has always been rather frustrating in terms of confusion about implementation.
Vicky Pearce is director at B-Compliant asks whether ex-pat clients are worthwhile in a post Brexit world.
This New Model Adviser podcast sees Altus Consulting's Ben Hammond suggests that it is platforms’ profits are attracting a frenzy of private equity interest.
