So it seems Britain's exit from the European Union is going to come down to a heavyweight, prime time bout between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn - but appropriately there was some confusion this week about exactly what was happening with this televised debate on Brexit.
In the world of financial advice, things have been much less dramatic. It's time for the week in news.
1) Top of the pops
This week FTAdviser revealed its annual list of the top 100 financial advisers but this year things were slightly different.
For the past five years, the list has been based purely on gross sales using data from our research partner Strategic Insight, formerly known as Matrix Data.
However, this year marks a new dawn for FTAdviser’s Top 100 Financial Advisers list as we have made significant changes to the methodology we use to rank businesses and based it on a greater volume of data received from Strategic Insight about these companies.
As a result, Tenet claimed the top spot this year due to a combination of their assets under management, the number of highly qualified individuals at the business and net retail fund sales.
2) Taxing oversight
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has revealed that some savers have been receiving tax relief twice, while others aren’t receiving what they are due.
The tax blunder is due to the two existing types of schemes in the UK, relief at source and net pay arrangement, the taxman stated in its November newsletter for pension schemes.
In a joint article with The Pensions Regulator the taxman revealed that in net pay arrangement schemes some member contributions were made after tax and national insurance had been deducted.
"This means the member will not have received the right amount of tax relief," it stated.
3) Keep your friends' money close...
However bad your Christmas gets this year, at least it won't be as bad as Mark Starling's.
By the time he gets to opening his presents he will be less than a month into a five year spell at Her Majesty's pleasure after he defrauding investors of just under £3m in relation to unauthorised investment schemes he operated between 2008 and 2017.
The 57-year-old obtained the money from his friends and acquaintances and they entrusted him with just under £3m of their cash.
Starling claimed to be running three funds, the Pilot Dax fund, the Shadow Dax fund, and the Pilot Eurostoxx fund, and described himself as a "proprietary futures trader".
He traded just £8,000 of the £3m invested with him, on which he made a loss of £2,450, yet managed to spend over £1m maintaining his own lifestyle.
Starling would sometimes pay money back to his investors on request to sustain the illusion of running a successful investment business. but these payments were just funded from other victims’ investment money.
4) Spare any change?
We've all been a bit short on cash every now and then, but it turns out the Financial Services Compensation Scheme is short some £69m.
This week we learnt the retail pool will pay an estimated extra £69m towards the cost of running the FSCS due to pension transfer related claims.
The FSCS revealed that self-invested personal pension (Sipp) and other pension transfer-related failures had made up 45 per cent of all defaults declared and 83 per cent of resulting claims received during 2018.
This was due to the larger claims volumes that relate to pension adviser defaults, it said.
Since 2016/17, claims relating to other types of pension transfer have increased significantly, such as the ones relating to the British Steel Pension Scheme.
5) In the lap of luxury
Some 36 per cent of individuals who haven’t taken up pensions guidance have spent their pension pot on luxuries such as a holiday or new car, a government-commissioned survey has found.
This figure drops to 12 per cent among individuals who have had an appointment with the government's free guidance service Pension Wise.
The survey, which polled almost 3,000 Pension Wise users and non-users during 2017/18 for the Department for Work and Pensions, found savers who had withdrawn their pots used it mostly to invest in non-pension savings and investments, followed by home improvements.
Former pensions minister Steve Webb had said in 2014 it was up to savers whether they wanted to blow their pension cash on Lamborghini sports cars after the pension freedoms were introduced.
damian.fantato@ft.com
