June 4, 2009 · Leave a Comment
If you have seen a recent edition of New Model Adviser you will have seen some of the results of the survey of paraplanners in the UK undertaken by NMG in conjunction with The Paraplanner. The results provide a fascinating insight into w . ho paraplanners are, where they’ve come from, what they do and where they want to be. This is the only survey of paraplanners ever conducted and it provides for the first time some real statistics about paraplanners and paraplanning. Finally a big thank you to everyone who took part... [Read the full story]
August 1, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Dominic Brooks, Winterthur’s Pension Development Manager, examines the additional issues involved when a plan includes a Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) element. Client options Our clients’ options are to leave the benefits where they are or move them to a replacement S32, or to a personal pension. The first problem lies in finding an alternative provider willing to accept the GMP liability as, though there may be one, I am not aware of any provider currently accepting new S32 business that includes GMP. So... [Read the full story]
February 21, 2009 · Leave a Comment
As many of you will recall I was privileged to be invited to the Morningstar Conference last year and was very, very impressed with both the organisation and content. The conference was extremely well organised and also extremely well attended. It was also beneficial from the point that it was not attended solely by IFAs. There were many professionals there from many different branches of Financial Services. There were IFAs (and Paraplanners) present but in addition there were Fund Managers, Investment Researchers, Product... [Read the full story]
September 2, 2008 · Leave a Comment
Stamp duty is to be axed for a year on properties costing less than £175,000 as part of a package of measures being unveiled to help the housing market.The level at which the 1% purchase tax has to be paid is to be increased from £125,000, from Wednesday morning. Read the full story from BBC News here. Read More →
February 15, 2009 · 1 Comment
I am travelling to Belfast on Monday for a workshop on how paraplanners can use IT to make them more efficient and so I thought I would write about two things I have tried over the last week both of which are radically different. First of all, I have started using Twitter. I have been following the hype about this ‘micro blogging’ service for several months and at first I didn’t really get it; why would the world want to know that you have just got up or are walking the dog whilst thinking what to cook... [Read the full story]
April 2, 2009 · 1 Comment
A short while ago here at Brand Financial Training, we had a telephone call from somebody studying for CF2 Investment and risk. They were querying at what stage higher rate tax becomes payable and revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of how income tax is calculated. We did of course explain the topic to them, and helped them to understand the calculation process, but it brought up such an important issue that we decided we’d write this article about income tax. Note that this relates to tax year 2008/09 which... [Read the full story]
August 1, 2008 · Leave a Comment
We thought it would be a good idea to start to provide reviews of new products. We felt that as we were reviewing Plans and products and trying to understand them as part of our day jobs it would be good to share this information with our readers.We have tried to set this out in a way which answers basic questions and tried to collate all the various pieces of information from the company literature and present this in a way which is appropriate for paraplanners, whatever their level of knowledge or experience. Invariably... [Read the full story]
Previously I looked at the recent changes in relation to paraplanning within the industry. These changes have led to a greater understanding of what a paraplanner is and the benefits... [Read more]
I am writing this short article to ask you all for your thoughts and comments. Richard and I were asked to participate in the Institute of Financial Planning’s (IFP) North... [Read more]
Life as a Freelance Paraplanner Martins Blog: Star Date: January 2009 Mission : To boldly go where no man (or woman) has been before (well except Roger... [Read more]
We have been working on this for some time now and are very excited to announce that the Awards are launched today. There will be lots of publicity and... [Read more]
We thought it would be a good idea to start to provide reviews of new products. We felt that as we were reviewing Plans and products and trying to... [Read more]