Lifetime ISA Launch: The Lowdown

April. Spring has sprung and with it brings the start of the new tax year. Workers get a £500 rise in their tax-free Personal Allowance and ISA savers see their annual allowance rise to £20,000. But bubbling under the surface is a product that has been much-maligned...

Keeping up with the customer

Natwest has just announced 128 branch closures because of the ‘dramatic shift’ from face-to-face to online and mobile transactions. Nothing new there… 32 branches went last year because of ‘increased use of digital banking’ and 300 back in 1996, as it rolled out...

Which advisers go for investment trusts

The idea of patient long term capital is attractive – especially in the context of investment trusts. Higher long term returns could come from the higher risks involved in holding investment trusts. What’s more I think that it could have legs in the adviser community,...

Assessing Financial Stability of Platforms

‘Financial stability’ is consistently among the top ‘musts’ of the perfect platform. Advisers rated it ahead of ‘low charges’ as the top ‘must’ in Q4 for the first time.  But is all this just confirmation bias? In today’s email I will dig in to the detail of these...