Personal finance journalism is 50 years old this week. When the Daily Mail launched Money Mail on September 28, 1966 it was an untested and innovative concept.
“You’ve worked for your money, now make it work for you”, was the message. In two pages it looked at savings and borrowing – you could earn rather more on your money then without risk.
The nature of it has changed over the years evolving from a forum for product launches to harder, consumer-orientated stories and well-argued campaigns.
Mortgages, pensions and savings are now front page news rather than being confined to the nether regions of newspapers.I have been involved with Money Mail for more than half of its lifetime and I believe that it, and other personal finance supplements, have helped to shape a far more consumer-friendly investment, savings and borrowing culture in the UK.
There have been many times when we have had to give regulators and governments a jolly good kick up the backside for failing to do their jobs properly.
Examples include personal pensions mis-selling, endowment mis-selling, the Equitable Life debacle and employees being robbed of their pensions.
We have also been forced to take the industry to task on far too many occasions particularly for mis-selling a range of things from precipice bonds to payment protection insurance.
But the relationship between journalist and industry has broadly been positive. Would we have so many people committed to Isas and investing today without the clear explanations offered in newspapers? I doubt it.
And there would almost certainly not be an active building society sector today without the heavy campaigning Money Mail undertook to support the industry against a wave of carpet-bagging.
Most journalists have also been supportive of independent financial advice since its inception. Some of you may wish it could cost less and be more accessible, but there is no arguing that it is the gold standard.
What is perhaps strange is that the idea has not really spread abroad. When Santander took over Abbey National their new owners were apparently aghast at the influence of the personal finance press.
In Spain, consumers were expected to take whatever the banks threw at them; buying an advertisement more or less guaranteed favourable coverage.
In the UK the press lobbied hard on behalf of consumers and scrutinised new products.
Even in the US there does not exist a personal finance press as such. Coverage of such issues tends to be limited to “puff” put out by banks and savings institutions and covered by City-type journalists who dislike sullying their hands with such trivial stuff.
I’ll be raising a glass to celebrate Money Mail’s half century and to a form of journalism that I believe at its best succeeds in educating, informing and campaigning on behalf of millions of readers.
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MPs not hit by vicious LTA cuts
The Lifetime Allowance on pensions is no longer fit for purpose as it disproportionately disadvantages those who are saving for their retirement through a private pension or a workplace scheme. So says financial planner Gary Smith of Tilney Bestinvest.
That about hits the nail on the head. Apparently, HMRC raked in £126m from 1,500 individuals during the 2015/16 tax year, a 62 per cent rise in the tax take in just one year.
And that was before the latest cut to £1m.
Let’s be clear here. Cutting the lifetime allowance was a vicious manoeuvre by MPs who themselves benefit from final salary pensions subsidised by taxpayers and who clearly have no concept of how hard it is to save for a pension and how much is needed to gain a decent income in retirement.
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More Carnage than Carnival
We now know that Mark Carney’s boyhood nicknames were Carnage and Carnival, thanks to children at a BBC gathering who managed to pull some gems from the Bank of England governor that more experienced journalists had failed to uncover.
We also know he favours withdrawing the penny piece in the long term – though I am not sure why, as this would appear to make paying certain amounts of money impossible.
What the youngsters failed to uncover, and I would like to know, is why in August interest rates were cut to 0.25 per cent and a new tranche of quantitative easing was launched?
Hindsight may be easy, but with the markets going from strength to strength and economic forecasts being revised upwards, it is difficult to see the argument for the £70bn bond-buying programme.
Tony Hazell writes for the Daily Mail's Money Mail section. He can be contacted at t.hazell@gmail.com
