Standard Life

Standard Life has expanded its position in the financial services distribution market with the purchase of a 10% share in IFA support services firm Simply Biz.

HM Revenue and Customs is changing the way retirement annuity contracts are taxed as around 200,000 pensioners are paying too much tax.

The latest savings and investment index from Standard Life suggests few consumers have a continuous relationship with a financial adviser.

Standard Life is set to make a profit of more than £100m from its 7.9% holding in Corus as a result of Tata Steel's £4.3bn offer for the steelmaker, says the Daily Telegraph .

Over one fifth of advisers place less than one tenth of their protection business in trust, according to research from Standard Life.

For many offshore insurers, this is the best of times as offshore single premium sales in the UK are expected to exceed £6bn in 2006.

As I began to write this blog I wondered how many advisers found and read my last blog - the answer to which is 41 ( but it has gone up since - ed ) - so in case you are not one of the 41 that read my last blog, it was about the effective use of e-mail....

The BBC's Panorama programme recently featured the alleged payment of bungs (more politely referred to as ‘irregular payments' by the Premier League) to football managers.

The minister for pensions reform has hit back at critics of the proposed personal accounts by suggesting claims of mis-selling are "scaremongering".

Another set of statistics about sales of pension term assurance was published yesterday, this time from HSBC which claims 84% of its life-only policies sold are PTA products.