Former pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann says a PLSA call for smaller DB pension schemes to be merged into ‘superfunds’ to cut costs and improve returns is a “win-win” for employers and the schemes.

Former IFP chief executive Nick Cann, who suffered a major stroke in 2013, received two standing ovations at the annual CISI-IFP Financial Planning Conference today with a moving account of his battle to rebuild his life.

Justin Urquhart Stewart, director and co-founder of investment provider 7IM, said that the UK economy was weakening and the economic cycle - and not Brexit - was the main culprit although he agreed Brexit had unnerved international investors.

Financial education evangelist Warren Shute has won the coveted Certified Financial Planner of the Year Award in the annual CISI Financial Planning Awards.

More than 2,300 financial advisers have so far signed up for the PFS Festival of Financial Planning in November which is set to be the biggest Financial Planning Conference the UK has seen.

CISI chief executive Simon Culhane, Chartered FCSI, says that expanding the CISI’s Financial Planning membership and international growth will be the two key strategic aims for the body in the coming year.

Fast-growing Chartered Financial Planning firm Fairstone has added two Financial Planning firms to its downstream buy out (DBO) programme which will ultimately see them acquired.

The CISI is to make significant changes to the pathway to its Certified Financial Planner qualification but it will not be “watered down,” the incoming CISI head of Financial Planning Jacqueline Lockie told the annual conference this week.

The latest digital edition of Financial Planning Today, our 40-page magazine for Financial Planners and Paraplanners, has now been published and is available online.  

Sanlam UK - part of Sanlam Limited, the South African-based group - has speeded up the development of its HNW client Private Office arm by appointing two new experienced recruits, Jonathan Moon and Will Cayzer.