If I had a penny for every time someone asked me how I got into financial services I would be pretty rich by now.

What is CPD? According to the Personal Finance Society: “Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is activity undertaken to ensure members' skills and knowledge are up-to-date.”

Last year I read an article offering some advice to millennials from a millionaire, “if you want to buy a house, stop buying avocado toast.” Thank you Tim Gurner. I don’t think I’ve ever had avocado toast and I am yet to be a homeowner. 

Here we are again looking at the annual review from the Financial Ombudsman Service of complaints they have received and dealt with in 2017-18.

When I was growing up, my parents often told me: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.

Although still in the early stages of my career, the people I have worked with, or met in the industry have been central to my development.

We are coming up to 12 years since the introduction of pension simplification and although it seemed at the time not to solve or simplify much I would go back to that day in a heartbeat.

There isn’t anything wrong with a defined benefit transfer for the right person at the right time for the right reasons, but it is a complex decision. So rightly, I believe, there is the advice requirement but this can cause issues for those that can’t afford to pay for advice.

In the final report of its inquiry into pension freedom and choice, the Work and Pensions Committee calls for a simple package of measures to create better informed, more engaged pensions savers – and offer a default decumulation pathway to protect the less engaged.

I make no apologies for the fact that ‘phoenixing’ seems to be a regular topic in the industry press – a quick search of the internet brought up no end of articles on the subject, going back over a number of years.

Cast your mind back to 2035 - the year of the great blip. We had made great progress. All individuals, companies and legal entities held their accounts open to each other through the DigiChain.