Good morning and welcome to your Morning Briefing for Tuesday 23 September 2025. To get this in your inbox every morning click here.
IPTF kicks off Protection Week amid IP sales growth
The Income Protection Task Force (IPTF) has launched its annual Income Protection Action Week (IPAW), running online from 22–26 September.
The free online event offers advisers and intermediaries up to five hours of unstructured CPD.
Day one focused on the state of the protection market and the case for income protection (IP), with adviser case studies and expert interviews.
Victoria Ross: The value of peace of mind
It often comes as a surprise to clients that markets, and their investments overall, have been relatively buoyant over the past year, writes Victoria Ross, a chartered financial planner with Progeny.
That surprise is understandable. News headlines are rarely reassuring, dominated by tragedies in the Middle East, political uncertainty from the US administration, and a steady drip of speculation about tax changes in the run-up to the Budget.
Flower Group launches solution to help advice firms grow
The Flower Group has launched Growth Centre, an all-in-one data analysis tool to help financial planning firms identify inefficiencies, support succession planning and drive commercial growth.
The dashboard brings together client, plan and business data in one suite of visual tools, offering actionable insights to inform decision-making.
Quote Of The Day
It didn’t make sense. That premia was a bit too high and the whole thing has started to unwind in the last 10 days
– Edouard Hindi, chief investment officer at Tyr Capital, on the recent slump in cryptocurrency prices amid concerns of overvaluation
Stat Attack
Raising children may be rewarding, but new data shows just how costly it is – and how heavily it weighs on parents’ financial resilience.
The latest HL Savings and Resilience Barometer highlights the spending gap and the knock-on effects on savings, insurance and home ownership.
£119,600
The estimated extra cost of raising a child over 18 years, once inflation is factored in.
£5,108 a year
The additional annual spend by couples with children compared to couples without.
£154 vs £559
Average amount left at the end of the month for couples with children versus those without.
3% vs 62%
Proportion of couples with children who have enough left over each month to be financially resilient, compared to couples without.
45% vs 71%
Couples with children who have at least three months’ worth of emergency savings, compared to couples without.
33% vs 71%
Couples with children who have enough life-insurance cover, compared to couples without.
36% vs 44%
Couples with children on track with home ownership, compared to couples without.
19% vs 13%
Couples with children worried about debt, compared to couples without.
Source: Hargreaves Lansdown
In Other News
Dynamic Planner has added Timeline’s Classic and Tracker model portfolios to its platform, broadening the choice available to advisers and their clients.
The digital advice platform now offers more than 1,000 risk-profiled model portfolio solutions from over 150 investment managers, covering some 1,800 investment strategies.
This is the first time Timeline’s portfolios have been included on Dynamic Planner, with fees starting at 0.09%.
The portfolios are aligned with risk profiles and regulatory requirements to support consistent and compliant advice.
Dynamic Planner chief revenue officer Yasmina Siadatan said: “We continue to bring on new MPS partners to the platform, ensuring we deliver the broadest range possible to our clients and theirs.
“We welcome Timeline and look forward to opening up an even more extensive choice of MPS for the advice community.”
Timeline chief operating officer Ed Carey added: “This partnership makes it easier for advisers to align our portfolios with their clients’ risk profiles.”
Fidelity International has launched the Fidelity Funds 2 – US Smaller Companies Fund, aimed at giving investors exposure to US small cap stocks with strong growth potential.
The fund will invest at least 70% of its assets in equities of smaller companies that are listed, headquartered or primarily operating in the US.
Fidelity said the US small cap market is under-researched, offering opportunities to identify overlooked growth stories.
By focusing on smaller businesses with a local emphasis, the fund seeks to diversify away from concentrated areas such as large-cap technology, while benefiting from firms less exposed to global trade tensions.
The strategy applies valuation discipline to manage risk during market downturns.
The fund is sub-managed by portfolio manager Forrest St Clair at Fidelity Investments in the US, supported by Fidelity’s analyst team.
It is available to investors through a Luxembourg SICAV (UCITS) structure.
Dennis Pellerito, head of wholesale UK at Fidelity International, said: “This new fund provides a differentiated avenue to access the US market through a complementary approach to large cap investments.”
Reeves can raise income tax and spare employees, study finds (Bloomberg)
Warren Buffett dumps stake in Chinese Tesla rival amid £31bn exodus (The Telegraph)
Why AI systems might never be secure (The Economist)
Did You See?
Since Pension Freedoms allowed people to draw their pension in a flexible format, we have seen considerable innovation in the way pension money is used in the early years of retirement.
Phased drawdown in the form of a regular crystallisation can pay Pension Commencement Lump Sum (PCLS), and no income, to people over 55. For many advisers like me, options like these are used for tax efficiency, and they are very effective.
In one specific circumstance, it turns out monthly PCLS can be very effective indeed, because the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) does not seem to have adjusted its method for calculating income to account for the modern pension system.
The consequence of this is that fathers aged over 55 can, with seeming impunity, live on monthly payments of PCLS and be happily declared as owing zero child maintenance. This is because, in the eyes of the CMS, this money is a lump sum and not income.
