Popular News
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Industry urged to probe pensioner spending habits
Pension providers have been urged to find out more about post-retirement spending as new research suggests homeowners’ and renters’ drawdown habits are very different.
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Single pensioners need £225K more for ‘moderate’ retirement
Single pensioners need £225,000 more in their pension pot than couples to achieve a ‘moderate’ standard of living in retirement.
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DC savers warned of 20% hit from Trump’s tariffs
Donald Trump’s tariffs could hit UK pensions, with DC savers warned they may experience a 20% cut in their retirement income.
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Number of appointed reps continues to fall
The number of appointed representatives continued to fall in 2024/25, according to the latest data from the Financial Conduct Authority.
Latest Blog
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James Jones-Tinsley: Aiming for an advice-guidance sweetspot
As Nikhil Rathi is reappointed as CEO of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for another five years, the FCA has set out its strategic direction for 2025/26, with important implications for financial advisers.
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Lisa Webster: Over-taxation of pensions remains an issue
HMRC’s January pension schemes newsletter announced changes to tax codes for pensions, and a few headlines followed proclaiming HMRC had finally fixed the over-taxation issue. It would be fantastic if that was the case, but despite nearly 10 years of getting it wrong, the problem isn’t resolved yet.
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Lisa Webster: Divorce impact on lump sums raises question
The lifetime allowance may have been consigned to the annals of history but the various forms of protection are still relevant in the new world, especially when it comes to the amount of pension commencement lump sum (PCLS) that can be taken.
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Martin Tilley: How education can tackle pension scams
The dark reality of pension scams is that we don’t really know how common they are. Fraud is a crime which tends to have low reporting events and with pension scams, it’s no different. The emotional toll can be as large as the financial, with some people being too embarrassed to report that they have been the victim of a scam.
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Lisa Webster: Maximising protected tax-free cash
While 2024 ended with a lot of doom and gloom in the pension world following the big announcement on inheritance tax (IHT), there was some good news that may have slipped under the radar of some advisers.
Momentum Pensions, a UK and international SIPP and pension provider, has appointed seasoned financial services executive Sandra Robertson as its new group chief executive as Stewart Davies hands over the role after six and a half years.
The Financial Services Compensation Scheme has declared 12 failed firms in default in April - including former major SIPP provider Berkeley Burke.
Carey Pensions, now know as Options SIPP, has claimed victory in the long-awaited Adams Case over who is liable for SIPPs investments.
Retirement solutions and platform provider Embark is planning a tie-up with Openwork, one of the UK’s largest adviser networks, which will see Embark's new Advance platform become the lead supplier to Openwork’s 2,000 advisers for five years until 2026.
Nearly half (47%) of 55 to 64-year-olds are unaware that deferring the State Pension can boost their retirement income significantly when they start to claim their pension benefits.
Many pension savers are missing this valuable ‘Financial Planning’ option when they retire, according to research from retirement specialist Just Group.
Deferring the State Pension payment can mean significantly higher state pensions with every nine weeks of deferral boosting income by 1% - equivalent to 5.8% more income for every 52 weeks of deferral.
However, just over one in 10 (12%) of those aged 65+ had deferred their State Pension with the figure higher among women (16%) than men (9%) and also higher among the semi-retired (22%) than fully retired (11%).
Just says with Coronavirus hitting financial plans many more could consider State Pension deferral to boost retirement income.
Stephen Lowe, Just communications director, said: “Deferring State Pension is an important option for the rising number of over-65s in good health and who plan to carry on working.
“It needs to be factored into people’s Financial Planning in the run-up to retirement so it is worrying that such a high number of people aged 55-64 don’t know that there is a degree of flexibility around when and how they take their State Pension.”
According to research by Just the appetite for State Pension deferral has waned in recent years with about 1m people currently receiving extra money as a result of deferral, about 25% fewer than the peak in 2004, according to Department of Work and Pensions figures.
With the full New State Pension rising to £175.20 a week from April, deferring for one year would result in
£10.12 extra a week – more than £526 a year.
Those who have started to receive the State Pension can defer payment once during retirement.
Most people tend to defer the State Pension for between one and two years but more than half defer for longer.
Among those who chose not to defer, 31% said it was because they wanted to stop working as soon as they could. A quarter (25%) said they would have had to defer for too long to make the weekly increase worthwhile.
How long after you were eligible did you defer starting to receive your State Pension?
Up to a year -15%
1-2 years - 31%
2-3 years - 26%
3-5 years - 19%
5-10 years - 8%
Source: Just Group
Financial Planners are no longer using cost as the main factor when selecting platforms, according to evidence in the latest Platform Report in the current Financial Planning Today magazine.