The National Audit Office report into the British Steel Pension Scheme finds that regulated financial advice did not provide the protection required.
Indeed 47 per cent of transfers were deemed unsuitable. The NAO has also criticised the compensation available through the redress scheme.
Of course, you have to be a little careful as the worst of the transfers came from businesses with very little regard for advice standards. They also had what amounted to a conveyer belt approach.
Yet it is clear the scandal will continue to dog the profession to some extent.
The gender pay gap is slight for advisers but much worse for paraplanners according to exclusive research shared with Money Marketing by recruiter BWD.
While the average male adviser earned in total £96,182, his female counterpart earned £94,153.
For paraplanners, overall earnings were 20.2 per cent higher for males.
It would be interesting to get some women paraplanners’ thoughts on this.
The FOS’s maximum compensation award will rise by £20,000 to £375,000 from 1 April as Financial Planning Today reports.
The FTAdviser podcast suggest that the Online Safety Bill is a chance for tech firms to clean up their image. Time will tell as they say.
The Bank of England raised interest rates to 0.75 per cent but has been deemed to be relatively ‘dovish’ in its accompanying remarks.
The Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s threshold freeze is bringing much more money into the Treasury as inflation surges. FTAdviser quotes Tom Waters, a senior research economist at the IFS.
He said: “Usually tax thresholds go up in line with inflation. Last March, when the chancellor announced a four-year freeze in income tax thresholds, inflation was fairly low and so he expected it to raise about £8bn per year.
"Since then inflation has risen rapidly and is expected to rise even further, peaking at more than 8 per cent. That means that the tax threshold freeze is now on track to be a £20.5bn tax hike – two and a half times what was originally expected.”
Investment Week hosts a line up of experts discussing the Ukraine crisis and its impact on markets.
