I was a bit disappointed that Gary Lineker didn't feature at all in today's Budget, but his name did make an appearance in Prime Minister's Questions which preceded it, so that will have to do. We were expecting (hoping) for a "boring Budget" (Jeremy Hunt's words, not ours). And in many ways it was. However, there were some big, unexpected changes to pension rules, so much...
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So while robo-advisers have been around for a while (and, to coin the late, great Ian Taylor, "involve neither robots nor advice"), the more traditional world of real-people financial advice has been making the news recently. First, Vanguard announced that is closing its less-than-two-years-old financial advisory service. It seems their low-cost, low-frills service wasn't generating much traction in the UK - even at an attractive 0.50%...
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It's been a while since I've posted here, but things are settling down now. The past few years have been personally very challenging and very busy (injury, bereavement, house renovations and more) so the blog has unfortunately taken a bit of a back seat. But I am now hoping I can make a more concerted effort to keep the website up-to-date with topics from the...
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The Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) has recently introduced a new Pension Transfer Gold Standard, to help ensure the highest-quality advice for clients considering whether to transfer out of a final salary pension scheme. Given our similar commitment to excellence, Kennedy Black Wealth Management is very proud to be able to comply with this new standard. Final salary pension transfers have become increasingly popular in recent years, as...
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Happy Birthday to us!! Kennedy Black Wealth Management is ten years old today. Here's to the next ten years. Hope it doesn't go quite as quickly as the first ten....
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In what we believe is a first for a UK-based financial planning firm, Kennedy Black Wealth Management is delighted to announce that it is now carbon neutral and zero single-use plastic. We recently introduced several measures to eliminate single-use plastics in our office. Out went plastic cups, single-use cutlery and plastic milk bottles; in came reusable water bottles, proper glasses, steel cutlery and milk in glass...
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We monitor financial markets on an ongoing basis, and one of the tasks we undertake regularly is to compare the performance of our client's portfolios against a variety of benchmarks. We have been doing this for more than eight years, and over that time, one theme has emerged with surprising consistency - the woeful performance of discretionary fund managers (DFMs). DFMs are companies that manage client portfolios...
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Much like peeling an onion, financial services can make one's eyes water. Particularly when it comes to costs, which have traditionally been buried under layer upon layer. Thankfully, the onion that is financial services in the UK has already had a number of layers peeled off over the years. Initially, through commission disclosure ('this is how much we make from you'); then the transition from commission...
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Breaking with recent tradition on a number of fronts, yesterday afternoon saw Spreadsheet Phil's third Budget as Chancellor. It was as politically motivated as ever, perhaps no surprise as we are now just 3,613 hours away from Brexit. We have been relatively cynical recently about the Treasury's ability to formulate substantial and impactful changes when the Government's resources are so heavily devoted to the UK's departure from...
Read MorePlease find enclosed our hot-off-the-press summary of this afternoon's Budget. As with the Spring Budget before it, and the Autumn Statement before that, this (new) Autumn Budget was another damp squib, in our opinion. HM Treasury still clearly has its mind on more important matters, and there was therefore little in terms of substantive change. On the subject of changes to pension rules, cited in just...
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