Organising your ISA’s?

Enables’s IFAs in Bishop’s Stortford remind many of their investors to include ISA’s in their wealth management plans. Every year the Government gives us a tax-free Isa allowance, last year 2014/15 it was £11,880 between April and July, but this has now been boosted to £15,000 under the new Super Isa regime put in place.  You will also be able to move money from an investment ISA into a cash ISA under the new rules or put your whole allowance in a cash ISA. This applies to any money you have invested in previous years. But remember anything you have already put into an ISA for the 2014/15 tax year will already count towards the allowance.



This is where you might have to start thinking about tax. Any gains within an Isa are free from capital gains tax and everyone has a CGT allowance of £10,900 per year. If you have been investing consistently over time you may be surprised at how much these investments have become worth and holding them in a tax-free wrapper would makes sense.

If you opt to sell all or a large amount of your investments at one time and they are not held in an Isa, then they may be over the capital gains tax limit and liable to tax. Whereas, if you hold them in an Isa you will not be liable and will not even need to fill in a tax form if you sell. Income from investments is also treated in a more tax-friendly way in an Isa. Enable’s IFA’s can help you make the most of your ISA allowance.

Issued by: Enable Independent Financial Life Planners
25c North Street, Bishops Stortford, Herts CM23 2LD
Telephone: 01279 755950 - Fax: 01279 657339
Enable Independent Financial Life Planners is a trading style of Enable Independent Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
It is important always to seek independent financial advice before making any decision regarding your finances. If you would like any assistance, please contact us.
NOTHING CONTAINED IN THE ARTICLES SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AS GIVING INDIVIDUAL FINANCIAL ADVICE

Should pension providers be forced to scrap exit fees?

Enable’s IFA’s in  Bishop Stortford know much has been made of the impact of exit fees on pension pots and the effect they would have on savers’ability to enjoy the new pensions freedoms come April. George Osborne’s pensions budget was sold around the idea of freedom – savers can finally do what they want with their pots. But exit fees, of up to 35 per cent, would act as a very effective disincentive to transfer savings anywhere else to allow access to the range of new options.

There have been calls for the Government to intervene on savers’ behalf, but Steve Webb The pensions minister recently played down the scale of the problem. Many of these policies were written decades ago when the pensions world was completely different, some policies were designed around the idea that the running costs of the pension – including the commission paid to advisers for selling them ¬– were paid back over the life of the policy. However, some customers chose to pay all their charges up front, meaning they would lose out compared to those who pay them over time if early exit charges were waived.

Rowley Turton director Scott Gallacher says it would be difficult for the Government or the FCA to get rid of the contracts and that, more importantly, such a move would “destroy confidence in anyone investing in the UK pensions industry”. “It makes it hard for anyone to launch in the market if they can’t be sure of fees. We should have seen a flood of European companies coming to the UK, but apart from Now: Pensions I’d struggle to find anyone who has made a success of coming here.”

Issued by: Enable Independent Financial Life Planners
25c North Street, Bishops Stortford, Herts CM23 2LD
Telephone: 01279 755950 - Fax: 01279 657339
Enable Independent Financial Life Planners is a trading style of Enable Independent Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
It is important always to seek independent financial advice before making any decision regarding your finances. If you would like any assistance, please contact us.
NOTHING CONTAINED IN THE ARTICLES SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AS GIVING INDIVIDUAL FINANCIAL ADVICE

Omission of passive funds warns FCA

Enable’s IFA’s in Bishop’s Stortford are glad to see that the FCA is looking into investor complaints that popular fund rating websites are consistently leaving out passive funds from their performance tables, as reported by the Financial Times. “Fund rating websites such as Morningstar OBSR and FE Trustnet sometimes do not include trackers when displaying funds’ performance which could make it hard to determine the best and worst options within a sector” says the FT.

Tracker funds are ideal for those who want to invest but don't want the hassle of picking shares and want to avoid the costs of using active fund managers. These tracker funds do not use the concept of trying to beat the market by cherry-picking a selection of shares instead they are designed to follow a set index, such as the FTSE 100.They can keep costs ultra-low and while they may not beat the market they don’t fall far behind it - the idea is that slow and steady investing wins the race and it is possible to get cheaper better performance by just following an index.

The FCA says regulated firms told the FT it expects “any regulated firm to present information to consumers in a way that is clear, fair and not misleading” and that it will “always consider the information we receive” in response to investor complaints. Enable's Independent Financial Advisors in Bishop’s Stortford and available to talk you though the best way to make the most of your wealth management options.

Issued by: Enable Independent Financial Life Planners
25c North Street, Bishops Stortford, Herts CM23 2LD
Telephone: 01279 755950 - Fax: 01279 657339
Enable Independent Financial Life Planners is a trading style of Enable Independent Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
It is important always to seek independent financial advice before making any decision regarding your finances. If you would like any assistance, please contact us.
NOTHING CONTAINED IN THE ARTICLES SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AS GIVING INDIVIDUAL FINANCIAL ADVICE

Proper risk assessments

Any reputable IFA, like Enable of Bishop’s Stortford will want to be sure that any investment or wealth management clients have fully addressed their attitude to risk. Where genuine financial planning is involved a box-ticking ‘regulation-lite’ solution is not appropriate.

The FCA has also made it abundantly clear that assessment of the client’s capacity for loss is the crucial element in the investment advice process. Chris Gilchrist, a contributing author to Taxbriefs Advantage and edits The IRS Report says- “ It is intuitively obvious that ‘How much can you afford to lose?’ Or something like it, ought to be the starting point for professional investment advice. How someone feels about a loss is a secondary question, which most people will not be able to answer accurately until it happens.”

For this reason, he has never been too keen on attitude to risk questionnaires. “The appearance of academic objectivity vanishes when you understand that for a psychometric questionnaire to be valid, it must be completed independently (no interaction with adviser or spouse) and must include only attitudinal questions.”

Gilchrist suggests; “One of the best ways of improving investment outcomes is to get people to talk freely about their aims and expectations. I am sure most professional advisers treat a risk questionnaire as a jumping-off point for what can often be deep and meaningful discussions.


A questionnaire that prompts such a discussion may meet the test of improving advice and investment outcomes. But it can still fail the iceberg test: the risk of challenges to investment suitability and recommendations several years after the advice was given.” If you want to find out how Enable’s Independent Financial Advisors risk assess for genuine financial planning the best way is to talk to us.

Upsizing Downsizing?

Enable's Independent Financial Advisors know moving house is not always all about downsizing.  It is  interesting to note that last year 45,000 upsizers moved from the priciest London boroughs to ten other areas that include the likes of Hackney, Lambeth and Ealing, trading in their central location for bigger places on the periphery of zone one or into zones two and three - according to new research from property group, Savills.

It would also seem that the likes of Brighton, Bristol, St Albans and the Cambridgeshire areas that include Bishop’s Stortford are more likely to attract London migrants looking to change lifestyle and leave the capital, taking with them their property-related equity. The cities in the Midlands and the North are less likely to attract such migration. 

The study throws up some interesting migration patterns as the average price of a house in Kensington and Chelsea was £1.7m in 2013, this drops to £767,000 just a few miles down the road in Hammersmith and Fulham, and moves to £649,358 in Elmbridge.  The odds are that those who currently reside in Hackney will move to Haringey, then Brighton.  Those selling up in Tower Hamlets, where the average price was £382,951 last year, are most likely to move to Newham (£232,551) within the M25, and Birmingham if relocating completely (£160,662).

These results Savills suggests indicate that the capital flow leaving London positively impacts on the housing market recovery in other parts of the country. Whether you are upsizing or downsizing Enable's IFA’s in Bishop’s Stortford are here to help.

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.

Issued by: Enable Independent Financial Life Planners
25c North Street, Bishops Stortford, Herts CM23 2LD
Telephone: 01279 755950 - Fax: 01279 657339
Enable Independent Financial Life Planners is a trading style of Enable Independent Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
It is important always to seek independent financial advice before making any decision regarding your finances. If you would like any assistance, please contact us.
NOTHING CONTAINED IN THE ARTICLES SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AS GIVING INDIVIDUAL FINANCIAL ADVICE

Remortgage boom over the next 12-24 months

Experienced IFA’s Enable in Bishop’s Stortford can see why many mortgage brokers have predicted a bit of a remortgage boom over the next couple of years as the first rise in base rate in over five years looms on the horizon.

A report published by the Mortgage Advice Bureau recently predicted “a rise in remortgage lending from £55bn in 2013 - across owner-occupier and buy-to-let remortgages - to a predicted £58.2bn in 2014, £69bn in 2015 and £80bn in 2016, as rising house prices and an increase to base rate attracts more borrowers back to the market.”  The report says “4.8 million “silent prisoners” have been stuck on their current deal due to negative equity or have lacked an incentive to move as they have been stuck on a low tracker deal or SVR.”

Mortgage Advice Bureau head of lending Brian Murphy says: “Recovering house prices mean many homeowners will finally be in a position to re-enter the market for the first time in years with the equity needed to access new loans.  “Many more borrowers will want to position themselves on the most favourable deals before losing the advantages they have enjoyed in an era of exceptionally low interest rates.”

Perception Finance managing director David Sheppard thinks a boom in remortgages is likely sooner than 2016 as a result of continuing uncertainty around interest rates. He said: “We will undoubtedly see a boom in remortgages I think over the next 12 months, let alone by 2016. I don’t think this will be led by the actual interest rate hike, but more so by continued uncertainty around when that will come.  If you want to secure yourselves against uncertainty about what will come Enables IFA’s are here to talk.

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage.

Issued by: Enable Independent Financial Life Planners
25c North Street, Bishops Stortford, Herts CM23 2LD
Telephone: 01279 755950 - Fax: 01279 657339
Enable Independent Financial Life Planners is a trading style of Enable Independent Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
It is important always to seek independent financial advice before making any decision regarding your finances. If you would like any assistance, please contact us.
NOTHING CONTAINED IN THE ARTICLES SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AS GIVING INDIVIDUAL FINANCIAL ADVICE

A demonstration of true grit from Small business

For investments to flourish economies need to flourish and Enable's independent Financial advisors were pleased to see that according to this year’s Hiscox (their 6th) DNA of and Entrepreneur report,  businesses owners across the UK, US and parts of Europe are more optimistic than they have been for some time.

Entrepreneurs are apparently optimists -glass half full people -hardly surprising as with such optimism it is perhaps so much easier to take risk and work through challenges.  Clearly many entrepreneurs run small businesses and make a real difference to economies. Several studies in the US and UK have shown that the small business sector is “responsible for creating four out of every five new jobs and more than half of all commercial innovations..”

In Hiscox’s sixth international ‘DNA of an Entrepreneur’ study of small businesses, they are seeking to try and gauge the health of small businesses, and understanding the key issues they face. The study spans six countries and the results are far from even. But, overall, they say “there are renewed signs of growth, while optimism levels have rebounded.”

The report also says that “Nowhere is that better demonstrated than in the performance of small businesses set up during the recession. Our study reveals the dogged entrepreneurs behind these businesses are more likely than others to have increased revenues, launched new products or services and hired new staff in the past year. They are also more likely to say the economic environment has made them more determined to succeed. This is true grit.”

Issued by: Enable Independent Financial Life Planners
25c North Street, Bishops Stortford, Herts CM23 2LD
Telephone: 01279 755950 - Fax: 01279 657339
Enable Independent Financial Life Planners is a trading style of Enable Independent Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
It is important always to seek independent financial advice before making any decision regarding your finances. If you would like any assistance, please contact us.
NOTHING CONTAINED IN THE ARTICLES SHOULD BE CONSIDERED AS GIVING INDIVIDUAL FINANCIAL ADVICE