St James’s Place Wealth Management has recently been hammered in the press, particularly by the Times, over its incentive schemes. At the risk of being hung, drawn and quartered I believe the criticism has been over-done.

If you’d told me 10 years ago that Paraplanners would don warpaint once a year and happily gather to chew over technical issues in a giant teepee in Northants I might have suggested you’d been smoking the peace pipe a bit too long.

Until now Financial Planners have treated the threat from robo-advisers as a limited one - and they have been right to do so - but that attitude may need to change, according to a recent report.

There is a common mis-conception that Defined Benefit transfers are the scourge of society, an inherent evil that must be stamped out. This is far from true.