The whole ‘Chartered Body Alliance’ thing seems to have come out of nowhere to me. Clearly it has been brewing for a while and I think that it is a good thing for financial services.

It’s not a merger but it is a step forward for the Chartered adviser bodies and the Financial Planning profession and it’s long overdue.

It’s all too easy to become distracted by the hysteria of presidents, prime ministers, politics and performance in this busy start to 2017.

Editor: My 10 Wishes for Financial Planning in 2017

It’s traditional at this time of year to make predictions about the coming 12 months. Being somewhat of a contrarian I’m not going to do that.