Good morning and welcome to your Morning Briefing for Monday 5 February 2024. To get this in your inbox every morning click here.
Mansion House reforms need to go further
With 2024 set to be an election year, the government needs positive headlines and feel-good economic news. Ros Altmann says she believes this could happen.
An environment with sharply falling inflation, recession being avoided and earnings growth moderating but positive in real terms should enable base-rate cuts.
Welcome to Future Financial Adviser
“I want to be a financial adviser,” said nobody ever.
Perhaps that’s a bit dramatic, but financial advice – or financial planning – simply isn’t first in the queue when it comes to career consideration among young people.
To help with this, Money Marketing has launched a new digital community, Future Financial Adviser (FFA), in collaboration with M&G Wealth Advice, St. James’s Place and Quilter, plus our commercial partners Bespoke Training Solutions, The Patterson Group and Redmill Advance.
Quote Of The Day
A cyber-attack will be a worst nightmare for trustees and third parties. Anyone with experience of this in reality, or theoretically via “war game” scenario tests, will understand that these are incredibly complex situations with numerous decision points for all involved.
– David Brooks, head of policy at Broadstone, comments on the Pensions Regulator’s new report detailing how it would work closely with administrators and scheme trustees to assess the risk to pension schemes and their members
Stat Attack
While investing has soared in popularity since the pandemic, challenging market conditions, chronic uncertainty, or a history of trading losses have led to rising levels of stress among traders. With this in mind, City Index commissioned a survey of 3,000 participants. The survey asked: How often do emotions influence your decisions?
| Answer | Responses | Percent |
|
Always: My trading decisions are consistently influenced by emotions, and it’s a significant factor in my approach. |
79 | 2.6 |
|
Very Rarely: I am usually able to make trading decisions without being influenced by emotions |
257 | 8.6 |
|
Frequently: Emotions often impact my trading decisions, and I am aware of their influence |
607 | 20.2 |
|
Occasionally: Emotions play a role in some of my trading decisions, but not frequently |
999 | 33.3 |
|
Sometimes: I find that emotions influence my trading decisions on a moderate basis |
1,058 | 35.3 |
Source: City Index
In Other News
Evelyn Partners has appointed Declan Kirby as a chartered financial planner in its Birmingham office.
Before joining Evelyn Partners, he worked for Henwood Court Financial Planning as a chartered financial planner, providing financial planning and wealth management advice to his clients.
He focuses on working with senior executives, business owners and professionals, and is a fellow of the Personal Finance Society.
Kirby will be based at Evelyn Partners’ Birmingham office at 103 Colmore Row. The group supports clients with both their personal financial affairs and their business interests.
Evelyn Partners’ personal wealth management services include financial planning, investment management and personal tax advice, while for businesses it provides assurance and accounting, business tax advice, employee benefits, forensic advice, fund administration, recovery and restructuring and transaction services.
UK state pension age will soon need to rise to 71, say experts (The Guardian)
Iran used Lloyds and Santander accounts to evade sanctions (Financial Times)
French bank SocGen to cut about 900 jobs at Paris head office (Reuters)
Did You See?
As an avid reader of the Weekend Essays, let me start by saying how honoured I am to be sharing with you my own thoughts, focusing on the sometimes mystifying world of pensions, says Curtis Banks’ Caitlin Southall.
One of the reasons I always make the time to read the Weekend Essays is because they’re accessible and digestible- and the pension world could learn a lot from this.
Pensions in principle are simple. You add money to a pot over the duration of your working life, invest sensibly and then you can enjoy the fruits of your labour in your retirement.
But in reality, they’re far more complex than this.
