Opinion

It's fair to say that annuities have been given a pretty rough ride in recent years. There have been plenty of articles in the press, including Retirement Planner, highlighting the benefits of alternatives such as income drawdown and ASP. However, in...

When you live in Scotland, unless you fancy going on holiday to Spain or Greece, the lack of choice of direct holiday destinations often means trudging down to London in order to get to a wider array of destinations.

Should an adviser recommend an investment without knowing how its return will be measured? Since any investment is only as good as the return it delivers, probably not. Often laden with intangible benefits but concrete costs, good training opportunities...

"Rarely has there been a better opportunity for planners to prove their worth" says Jeff Prestridge, of the Financial Mail on Sunday, writing in April's Financial Planner magazine. How so, with markets going backwards, credit crunch nervousness and wholesale...

Conversion may be a term that has been covered once or twice before but it is something that affects lead sellers as well as lead buyers and this side of the issue often does not get discussed.

A few weeks ago I presented at the American Society of Actuaries 4th Annual Tele-Underwriting seminar in Tampa, Florida (it rained).

"Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can't buy what is popular and do well" Warren Buffet

Risk profiling, asset allocation and stochastic modeling tools have come a long way since the turn of the millennium when they first appeared.

You may have wondered why the blog has not changed for some time. This has really been because there has only been one thing that many of us have been able to think about - the CGT changes announced in the pre-budget report and confirmed in the budget....

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) will be dropping in to visit one in four of the firms under its charge and if the regulator does not come knocking this year, then management boards can expect not to be kept waiting long.