It’s a bittersweet apology from Hargreaves Lansdown August 21, 2019 With a hat-trick of senior figures set to leave Hargreaves Lansdown, one can’t help wondering how the investment company is going to revive its reputation. Prolific analyst and commentator Laith Khalaf started the trend last week, and yesterday saw the firm’s proposition manager and chair of its investment committee reveal that they were also stepping [...]
Why we should be worried that many women are reliant on their partners’ pensions August 20, 2019 We may have come a long way since the days when women were the property of men, but we still face some huge challenges when it comes to addressing financial gender inequality. According to a new report from Fidelity, 12 per cent of married women plan to rely on their partner’s pension in retirement, while [...]
The founder of Yulife on avoiding the grey-suit mentality of the insurance industry August 19, 2019 Dressed in a tie-dye T-shirt and jeans, Sammy Rubin looks more like a climate change activist than the chief executive of an insurance company. But then, there’s a lesson on why you shouldn’t judge people on how they look. Indeed, there are many things we can learn from Rubin – his hippyish dress-sense feeds right [...]
Government proposals to fix the NHS pension crisis still miss the mark August 14, 2019 It has been an unfortunate theme over recent years that public services have to reach crisis point before the government is stirred to take action. And here we have the mother of all crises (that is, the NHS crisis) made worse by a desperately confusing pensions system. When a tax rule is effectively stopping doctors [...]
The last resort: With travel operators running into trouble, here’s how to protect your holiday August 7, 2019 When you’ve spent hundreds or even thousands of pounds to escape to somewhere sunny for the summer holidays, you may have to stifle a scream when you find out that your travel operator has gone bust days before you were set to fly. This scenario will sound all too familiar to many families, after news [...]
What are the banks doing to help survivors of financial abuse? July 29, 2019 Money ultimately brings us freedom, so what if your partner were to restrict access to your income or bank account? It’s not uncommon for perpetrators of domestic abuse to manipulate their partners through money in this way – in fact, according to Women’s Aid, a third of survivors say that their access to cash during [...]
Game of drones: The founder of SenSat on solving construction problems by simulating reality July 22, 2019 “The internet connects all human knowledge, and for the first time in history, we can connect that human knowledge to the actual world we live in through our computers.” It’s at this point during my conversation with James Dean, the cooly-named co-founder of SenSat, that I start to grasp how ground-breaking his technology really is. [...]
Pension savings are being left in cash after M&G property fund blocks withdrawals July 17, 2019 M&G, which is owned by Prudential, insists that the deferral is not related to Brexit or the wider property market
Stop nudging people towards property at the expense of their pension – it’s irresponsible July 16, 2019 Suggestions that young workers should be able to dip into their pension savings to help buy their first home are unhelpful
A share in a housing nightmare? The problems with leasehold contracts and shared ownership July 10, 2019 The saga around leasehold contracts gets more complicated for buyers using the shared ownership scheme