Your LifeTalk Insider #40

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Welcome back…

From LifeTalk and LifeTalk Plus this week:

LifeTalk member and 16 others: If a company director is going to be 75 years old in June of this year, am I right in saying he can pay in £60,000 via his company at any point between the 6th of April and his 75th birthday or is there any restriction as he will hit 75 only a few weeks into the new personal tax year? Click…

Bill and 9 others: If a firm is receiving a regular ongoing advice fee from a client's pension and no review is carried out. The firm refunds the fee to the client. Would HMRC regard this as an unauthorised payment? Click…

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Jonathon and 78 others: How many appointments would you expect advisers do do in a week?

I have a number of advisers in my team and looking at the activity levels being achieved, they have full admin and paraplanning support. Many years ago when I joined the industry it was 12 meetings a week, and we did all our own admin, report writing etc. I’ve never monitored my meeting numbers, just always been busy, fortunately, and on average do 5 meetings a week with more complex clients and 1 with a professional connection.

My advisers tend to give more basic advice and carry out reviews for existing clients. Just looking for an idea of activity levels. Click…

Pete and 7 others: I have a client who has a share of a SSAS due to divorce circa £700k - was his ex-wife's pension. He wants to now transfer this into his own name in his SIPP. Having never done a case like this - what should I be looking out for, can it be done, or is this scheme dependant? Click…

Benjamin and 9 others: Does anyone know anything about preference shares?

A client called asking questions about investing into certain banking preference shares. Explaining that, in his view they were low risk with a decent fixed dividend. I have little knowledge about these and don’t have any intentions on getting to know much. However I wouldn’t mind providing some context to the client about why our approach is more sensible. I.e. low cost of evidence based investing. Click…

Mike and 7 others: Looking for a windows based tablet with a good writing pen for online docs. I say Windows so it will easily integrate with office 365 and other Windows applications. Be keen to read about anything anyone is using which is relatively new. I am looking for an alternative to a Microsoft surface pro. Lenovo looks good. Click…

Paddy and 18 others: It appears Canada Life have withdrawn their annuity product which allowed you to roll up annuity income within a pension. I have a client who wants to secure an annuity now but will still work until September this idea. Are there any other providers we can consider? Click…

Vulnerable Clients

New tool helps financial advisers to recognise vulnerable clients - take a look here…

Posts from LifeTalk Plus this week:

Gareth: Audit Costs For Firms With Discretionary Permissions

We currently have discretionary permissions, and have found that our audit costs have gone through the roof in the last few years. One reason given by the auditors was a general shortage of staff pushing up wages, and while I know (through Google) that accountancy like many industries/professions are in a similar position a +340% increase in 5 years still seems excessive.

Is there anyone else on here that has had a similar experience, as it would be helpful to know before I start to look at alternatives? Thanks. Click…

Phil: Do you know the value of your time as an adviser?

Sandro Forte is an extremely successful SJP adviser who is also a highly sought after speaker around the world. Here's a useful snippet from a podcast interview with Bill Cates on the importance of knowing the value of your time and by becoming more financially successful without working harder. Click…

Jason: Back office

We are looking at progressing with implementing AI into our firm , but are held back at every turn as we use TP. Who haven’t really developed in 10 years plus. Any thoughts on “PlanHappy” or other new alternatives? Click…

Philip: Lump Sum Allowance and Public Sector pension schemes

I've several clients who took benefits a few years ago from public sector pension schemes, when they were simple and you got a pension of X and a lump sum of 3X (and there was no choice about how much lump sum you got). Am I right in thinking that all of these people will have had a lump sum of less than 25% of the value of the pension, for the purpose of the new Lump Sum Allowance? Click…

Does what we call ourselves matter?

Hint: Yes it does. Interesting discussion over on LinkedIn about what titles financial advisers give themselves - everything from financial adviser, IFA, wealth manager, financial planner, lifestyle financial planner, life planner, later life adviser etc, and how we define them.

I've thought for a long time that the industry/profession (there, I'm even doing it myself) is doing itself a disservice by not clarifying these terms to consumers. Click…

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