Amid fears this week about Chancellor Rachel Reeves raiding pensions to plug tax gaps, there was better news on the State Pension for women.

Sasha Wiggins, the CEO of Barclays private banking and wealth management arm, has a job on her hands.

Back in 2002 Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defence, coined a phrase which has been repeated a million times since but I’m increasingly wondering whether it could be applied to UK pensions and ultimately financial advice (or rather lack of it).

I attended the launch in central London this week of the Personal Finance Society’s £1m drive to find new blood for the profession and tackle the worrying long-term decline in new entrants. It was a sobering morning.

I don’t think I was the only one a little surprised by the Chancellor’s decision this week to order a significant review of at least part of the Consumer Duty, which was only fully introduced in 2023.

The sheer scale of the financial scams and cons facing the UK came home to me this week with the publication of the FCA’s latest report on the many suspect financial promotions it had tackled over the past year.

Our annual Financial Planning Today survey is under way and the early findings are already revealing some surprising findings, including the depth of confidence in the profession despite the economic headwinds and concerns about the rising cost of regulation.

Financial Planners, of course, concentrate on the better off. They need to focus on people able and willing to pay their fees and that’s perfectly reasonable, indeed it's a business requirement.

A new offering from wealth manager and Financial Planner Foster Denovo caught my eye this week as one possible pointer to the promised ‘financial guidance’ future.

Today the FCA announced it was spearheading a global crackdown on rogue social media influencers. About time many will say.