The newly formed Pension Income Choice Association for people with pension pots of under £50,000 could be quite busy as this includes the majority of UK pension customers. Many IFAs are reluctant to deal with people with such small pensions as it is unlikely to be profitable or even loss-making business. Commission for arranging an annuity is typically one per cent, so for a £50,000 annuity earnings will be £500. But in most cases, earnings would be £375 as most people (sensibly) want to take their tax-free cash of 25 per cent of the fund. Looks a similar situation to solicitors where the £125 cost some charge for drafting a will is probaly loss-making too or if you prefer, the “sprat to catch a mackerel”. Just to enlighten you here, Tax-free Cash being a simple term which most people understand, is now officially called a Pension Commencement Lump-sum – under the Government’s Pension Simplification rules!

The initials at heading seem to be popular covering a host of different organisations all over the world as well as the eating disorder where people eat non-food stuff like clay, chalk or dirt.

Our regulators seem to be busy with a £2.8 million fine for sub-prime lender GMAC http://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/1001131.article?cmpid=MME01&cmptype=newsletter while high-street insurance broker Swinton is fined £770,000 for selling unnecessary PPI (Payment Protection Insurance) and is offering refunds on 480,000 policies http://www.myintroducer.com/view.asp?ID=1273 Difficult to buy any new gadget these days without being pressured into buying insurance, providing nice bonuses for the sales staff. If you have a credit card, you may have PPI included too and the card companies will only remove this rubbish when you tell them to. You will get much better value sickness protection insurance talking to an IFA who will take into account your whole financial situation, not just one bit of it. Recent review meetings with clients I haven’t met for a long time or new referrals where we do  holistic review, more often than not involve fairly basic financial housekeeping which clients can often do themselves.

Debt management companies are busy and two stories from www.eastangliandebtmanagement.co.uk are fairly typical. In one, a 26 year old lady working for a high-street bank took out a personal loan for a car when she started work, but with steady job found it easy to get one credit card, and another and another till she was £70,000 in debt. In another case, a business couple found themselves over £100,000 in debt with repayments of £2,500 per month. Solution in the first case was an IVA (Individual Voluntary Arrangement) while a debt management plan was set up with the second one.

Ethical Lender Triodos Bank are trying to practise what they preach with a transparency tool where you can see where their loans are going  http://www.triodos.co.uk/knowwhereyourmoneygoes Staying with green/ethical issues, Christopher Booker’s new book The Real Climate Change Catastrophe looks a good read  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6425269/The-real-climate-change-catastrophe.html perhaps for the Christmas stocking - if I can wait that long.

Least surprising item in the last few days is from the National Audit Office pointing out that elderly people pay more tax than they need to because the rules are complicated   http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/0809/dealing_with_the_tax_obligatio.aspx Reassuring to find my instincts correct in my bête noire Structured Products where again the regulators are doing something by putting these beasts under review. With investment strategies having names like: Napoleon, Cliquet, Wedding Cake and Annapurna, these often complicated products have been sold to risk averse investors rather like with-profits policies and funds a few years ago. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/6464922/FSA-puts-structured-products-in-the-spotlight.html

Proving the old saying that “good news is no news” a client attending a trade fair in Germany is impressed by the technology. All meaning that the finance required for the next business phase, is much more than the figure of last week and mortgage colleague Peter peter@in2consulting.co.uk is already on the case. The data needed for the lender was ready and e-mailed across quickly. Commercial mortgages require a fairly standard information set and requests for further information are usually positive. Most surprising here was the lack of interest in lending from his High Street Bank who as he pointed out, have had £billions (it’s actually £trillions) of our money.

Long-term Care creeps slowly up the agenda after a spectacular lack of interest in the late 1990s when the Royal Commission came to the unsurprising conclusion that it should be free, which helped no one. Couple of enquiries from solicitors show elderly clients in care homes, having large amounts of money but no idea how much future care will cost or how much needs to be set aside. All making the Inheritance Tax planning that may be driving the enquiry rather difficult.