Osborne’s pensions tax relief shake-up explained: What could happen and what should you do about it? February 18, 2016 Former pensions minister Steve Webb made headlines earlier in the month by claiming that abolishing Britain’s current system of pension tax relief could be George Osborne’s “’Gordon Brown’ moment” (referring to the latter’s notorious tax raid on occupational pensions in 1997). Now a director at Royal London, Webb pulled few punches in outlining what he [...]
Osborne’s latest pensions raid: Flat rate tax relief would be both irrational and unfair February 18, 2016 Private pensions have always been a soft target for cash-hungry chancellors. Nigel Lawson made pension funds restrict the size of their surpluses under threat of losing their tax-exempt status. Gordon Brown abolished Advance Corporation Tax in the great pension raid of 1997. And George Osborne has done his bit by slashing the annual and lifetime [...]
Alternative finance in 2016: Why the latest industry report tells us it’s now too big to ignore February 18, 2016 The growth of the alternative finance market is slowing. In 2015, it grew by 84 per cent compared to the 2013-14 rate of 161 per cent. This is the headline finding from Pushing Boundaries, the annual alternative finance report from Judge Business School’s Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) and Nesta, which was released yesterday. But [...]
Consumer’s guide to blockchain: How the cryptocurrency will revolutionise life for the consumer February 18, 2016 When I spoke to Peter Kirby, chief executive of blockchain startup Factom, he laughed when I described myself as a “blockchain traditionalist”. I meant that I still think of blockchain as the technology that made bitcoin credible – a peer-to-peer distributed ledger which immutably logs all transactions. This all sounds like jargon, so what does [...]
Ladies who don’t lunch: Maike Currie talks to financial services entrepreneur Joanne Smith about dry January and why compliance is the “new rock ‘n roll” February 18, 2016 My lunch date with Joanne Smith, financial services veteran turned entrepreneur, is long overdue. I have been using stalling tactics and to be honest it’s due to her area of expertise: compliance. (Read: boring box-ticker.) But it’s a New Year and, cloaked in noble resolutions, I finally make the time to meet her at a [...]
Saving Britain’s charities: The role of the finance function February 18, 2016 It is something of an understatement to say that it hasn’t been a great few months for the charity sector. Public patience with so-called “chuggers” who look to solicit donations from passers-by on the street has long been wearing thin. As an isolated practice, it seemed the public were just about able to bear it given [...]
Innovative Finance Isa: A guide to the new product and what it means for investors February 18, 2016 In less than two months, the Innovative Finance Isa will be launched, enabling savers to hold peer-to-peer (P2P) loans within the tax efficient wrapper. Hailed as the moment the P2P industry will chassé into the mainstream, research suggests it’ll also be popular with savers. According to research by P2P lending platform ThinCats, one in four [...]
London startup Curve launches new card that will allow consumers to combine all their payment cards February 17, 2016 London-based startup Curve launched today, the latest in a string of new companies in the payments technology sector, with the aim of allowing consumers to combine all their bank cards into one payment card. The card, which is supported by a mobile app, will be accepted everywhere that MasterCard is. According to the company, the service "offers [...]
Moaning millennials? Generation Y just want a job they can enjoy February 17, 2016 Moaning millennials? Old geezers down the pub used to tell the younger generation: “You’ve never had it so good”. Nowadays I’d expect most millennials would spit their pint out laughing, assuming they can afford to pay £5 for a pint. So a report today, which suggested generation Y (those born after 1980) are the "whiniest workers", [...]
Generation Y-ney? It’s official – millennials are the moaniest workers, while Generation X have the strongest work ethic February 17, 2016 Been hearing a lot of complaints from the youngest members of your team recently? Not surprising, apparently: new research has suggested that millennials – those born between 1980 and 2004 – are likely to be your workplace's whiniest workers. The research, by Workfront, found 41 per cent of workers think their millennial colleagues are the [...]
