The lockdown is easing, but the economy still needs support. Last week, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak extended it for some while warning that businesses would have to start shouldering more of the burden in other ways.
The Treasury has extended its coronavirus support scheme for the self-employed, offering a second three-month grant worth 70 per cent of average monthly profits.
But firms will have to pay 20 per cent of furlough wages from August.
Karen Ward, chief market strategist EMEA at J.P. Morgan AM, discusses how deep the Covid 19 recession will be.
This may be the key paragraph - “In our view, the severity of the downturn will likely depend on three factors: the time it takes for the disease to be contained, the pre-existing vulnerabilities in the global economy, and the worldwide policy response.”
Pension industry experts says the money purchase annual allowance needs reformed as investors have accessed some of their pension savings in the crisis, but will want to rebuild their portfolios in coming months and years. Not convinced the Treasury will be in listening mode.
Carol Knight, chief operations officer at Tisa, suggests that the benefits of digital signatures outweigh the risks.
She writes: “These include preventing delays and minimising applications not being completed because of the current requirements of wet signatures. There is of course a fraud risk, however, a wet signature is not immune from this either.”
Mike Fox, the manager of the Royal London sustainable leaders’ fund says the crisis has done more for ESG investing in 10 weeks than has happened in the last ten years. The fund has seen £500m in net inflows this year.
M&G buys Ascentric, a move analysed by Fundscape here and seen as an opportunity for the Prufunds.
Carey Pensions wins at the High Court which decides it is not responsible for store pod investments placed in its Sipp. The case is analysed here by the Pinsent Masons' Out-Law blog.
Citywire publishes a guide to the new tapered annual allowance regulations.
