If you’re fed up of politicians interrupting your day, then why not have a read of the week in news, where we’ll only mention the general election briefly. Promise.
1) Government closing down: everything must go
Ok, let’s get this over and done with: this week the government put its work on hold in order to spend the next few weeks touring the country repeating the same few phrases over and over again.
In order to do so it pushed through the Finance Bill without a number of its flagship proposals – though the government promises that if it gets re-elected it will seek to introduce them again.
The measures which have been sacrificed on Theresa May’s altar of getting a bigger majority include the measure to reduce the money purchase annual allowance from £10,000 to £4,000 and the cut in the dividend allowance.
But don’t worry: they’ll be back.
2) Go with the flow
The year is four months old – though it might not seem that way with everything going on in the world.
This means asset managers are bothering the industry with updates about how much money has flowed into their coffers.
Among the highlights were St James’s Place, which saw its flows surge with net inflows of almost £2bn, up by 46 per cent on the same period last year.
Meanwhile Jupiter achieved £1.4bn of net inflows and Old Mutual Wealth has seen £2.7bn of net client cash flows.
Who said Brexit would be bad for business?
3) FCA brings the house down
The Financial Conduct Authority took a break from looking into the advice market, the platform market and the asset management market to announce some findings about the mortgage market.
Lenders have been told to compensate a total of around 750,000 customers who may have been unfairly charged on their mortgage repayments.
The FCA has revealed some companies have been automatically including arrears balances when recalculating monthly repayment instalments.
Customers affected by the practice have effectively been paying twice, as firms have also been pursuing the shortfall balance separately through their collections processes.
The FCA has dubbed the practice ‘automatic capitalisation’.
4) MoneySupermarket: You’re so robo-advice
The cofounder of MoneySupermarket has helped build a financial advice service which he claimed could revolutionise the industry.
Duncan Cameron, who was behind the FTSE 250 comparison website, is the cofounder of online advice service Evestor, which aims to offer savers and investors advice at a “fair price”.
Mr Cameron worked on the idea with Evestor chief executive Anthony Morrow, who was also the founding shareholder of financial advisory group Paradigm.
Mr Morrow said the service offers financial advice, regardless of whether clients have “£1 or £1m spare”.
5) RIP Register?
Incoming regulations could see network members 'disappearing' from the Financial Conduct Authority's register, raising the risk clients will be left confused about the right of their adviser to practise.
From next year the senior managers regime will apply to all firms in the financial services sector – including advisers.
The rules were introduced for banks last year to ensure individual accountability and raise standards of governance, and set out a series of senior management functions which come with relevant responsibilities.
Each firm must appoint someone to carry out each senior function and inform the FCA who it is.
But when it comes into effect, only senior managers will be listed on the Financial Conduct Authority’s register.
This has raised concerns about how networks will be affected, with the prospect that their members might not be listed at all if their network becomes their “senior manager”, on the grounds that it does its members' compliance.
damian.fantato@ft.com
