The Financial Planning profession is heading in a new direction and there’s no better evidence of this than today’s (11 October) PFS Graduation Ceremony in the august surroundings of the Merchant Taylor’s Hall in the City of London.

It was good to get to the CISI 2019 Financial Planning Conference in Birmingham this week and meet some old faces - always one of the highlights of these events for me.

I must confess I always had reservations about the Pension Freedoms when they were introduced by George Osborne in 2015 and the latest FCA figures seem to back up comments I made at the time.

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.