Whether you have been enjoying this week's heatwave or you see it as the prelude to our inevitable fiery demise, this week it turned out the real worry was whether there was enough food to go around.
But before you rush off to the supermarket to raid the tin aisle, let's reflect on what's being keeping the financial services sector busy this week.
1) We're all going on a summer holiday
With the summer now in full swing, it seems there are a lot of accountants and executives who are done with the office and want to hit the beach.
Because this week we've been showered with a litany of financial results from companies keen to ditch the boardroom for the boardwalk.
For example, Schroders reported net inflows of £1.2bn into its wealth management division for the first half of the year, with £700m coming from the Benchmark Capital business it bought last year.
Meanwhile Jupiter's assets dropped by £2.3bn as investors pulled out of bonds, and Charles Stanley saw its assets increase to £24.9bn.
The Mortgage Advice Bureau reported an increase in revenue for the first half of the year despite fewer housing transactions taking place, while Metro Bank’s half year profits quadrupled year-on-year and Virgin Money saw its profit before tax increase by £3.4m.
But the pick of the bunch has surely got to be TSB, which managed to swing from a £108.3m profit to a £107.4m loss on the back of its failed IT upgrade.
Now, where's the sun cream?
2) A year is a lifetime in politics
It turns out some MPs might have a different idea of what counts as a "lifetime", because this week the Treasury select committee called for the abolition of the Lifetime Isa, only a year after it was rolled out.
The MPs said it was too complex, not popular among savers and incentivises savers to stop putting money in too early.
They also argued pensions tax relief, the main financial incentive the government provides for long-term saving, was not an effective or well-targeted way of incentivising saving into pensions because it gives greater incentives to those who earn more.
The comments about the Lifetime Isa were met with criticism from providers of the product, with Nutmeg saying it would be a "slap in the face" for a whole generation but advisers were more favourable towards the idea.
3) Never work with Kids
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has uncovered investment providers are making significant calculation errors when pulling together transaction costs for key information documents (Kids).
In a 23-page paper published by the FCA this week, the regulator revealed details around the issues it has already uncovered with investment providers having to make sense of Mifid II and Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (Priips) regulation.
About 5 per cent of funds reported zero transaction costs and a small number of funds reported negative transaction costs of less than minus 0.1 per cent.
The regulator stated while negative transaction costs are not necessarily inaccurate, when it reviewed example portfolios it "found significant calculation errors".
When these were corrected by the watchdog, the FCA found overall portfolio transaction costs for these portfolios were positive.
The FCA also found some investment providers were still unsure what products have to meet Priips rules which may have hampered launches.
4) Aegon again
Aegon's replatforming keeps turning up like a bad penny, especially for those affected by the problems the platform is facing.
This week an adviser fed up with Aegon's replatforming issues ran into problems when she tried to transfer part of her Isa portfolio across to Fidelity's Fundsnetwork.
Jenny Griffiths, who runs Stourbridge-based adviser CP Griffiths & Partners, wanted to transfer out of frustration at the quality of service received by Aegon since the upgrade.
But she has continued to receive daily valuations from Aegon for two of her nine funds despite the fact they are no longer on the Aegon platform and she can view them on Fundsnetwork, more than six weeks after the transfer took place.
Given that Aegon transferred 400,000 Cofunds users onto its new platform over the May Bank Holiday, this may not be the last we hear of Aegon's platform.
5) Suits you sir
The FCA reviewed a small number of defined benefit (DB) pension transfers advised by St James’s Place (SJP) and found them all suitable, according to the firm's chief executive.
In a letter to Labour MP Frank Field, chairman of the Work & Pensions select committee, Andrew Croft revealed the regulator included 65 of SJP cases in its suitability review published last year.
Mr Croft argued the watchdog found the firm's suitability results were superior to the rest of the industry results of 93 per cent suitable cases.
He was responding to a letter sent by Mr Field, after SJP was accused of approaching scheme members during the consultation process for closing British Airways New Airways Pension Scheme (NAPS) to future accrual last year.
The other firm accused of factory gating was Tideway, which defended its DB pension transfer seminars, claiming a mere 15 per cent of attendees typically went ahead with the process.
damian.fantato@ft.com
