Wealth news and insights

As part of ‘exploring the future’, we spoke to different experts to find out what long-term trends are they seeing and how these might affect your long-term financial plans and investments.

We ended 2018 in a funk. Investors were beginning to panic that the global economy was entering a period of sharp downturn, the US yield curve was close to inverting, the Chinese economy seemed to be in trouble, Europe was back in the doldrums and President Trump had engaged in a trade war with China and, at the same time, shut down a big chunk of the US government.

April: the first full month of spring, and a great time for financial planning tips. With January’s resolutions now a distant memory, this is an ideal time to spring clean your finances, make use of new tax allowances and start the new financial year on the right foot.

Markets have rallied in 2019 so far. But have they gone too far? We think this quarter's returns may have borrowed somewhat from the expected growth in the second half of the year and hence we feel a little uncomfortable about chasing them. 

Usually the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s spring statement is an important event in the UK political calendar, albeit one downgraded in recent years now that the full budget comes in the autumn.

State pensions are becoming less generous. Traditional employer pensions are falling by the wayside. And there are fewer young people to fund the pensions of our ageing population. Our guest contributor Baroness Ros Altmann, CBE and former Minister of State for the Department for Work and Pensions, considers the facts about retirement, and explores the notion that the ‘magic age’ beyond which we no longer work has become a thing of the past.