Profit is essential for all businesses to thrive and invest and Financial Planners, above everything else, are business people who need to make a profit. Profit is the lifeblood of all Financial Planning firms and that's something that is sometimes forgotten.

One of the main talking points this week has been the FCA’s Adviser Survey which seems to point to both positive and negative factors, as far as the professional advice sector is concerned.

Many years ago a wise and very experienced CEO of a Scottish life and pensions company (sadly no longer with us) passed on to me a very useful piece of advice on pensions which we were discussing at the time.

Targeted Support has arrived this week as planned and it has only taken a few days for two major companies, Royal London and Quilter,to join the fray. Many more will follow.

The Consumer Duty was introduced on 31 July 2023 and it’s fair to say it has shaken up the financial services sector and driven improvements in consumer protection - but is it having the full effect intended?

Apparently it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. This is an old adage but it seems it can now be applied to financial advisers.

In a sea of misery and general economic depression, it’s good to see that the humble ISA has brought some cheerier news by creating an unexpected plethora of new millionaires.

In just a few weeks the FCA’s much-heralded Targeted Support changes will arrive (on 6 April) and the advice world will change for the better - at least everyone hopes it does, because nothing is certain.

I must confess to being just a little baffled about the long-term direction of the government’s tax raising strategy, although it is clear that the tax take is going upwards.

In contrast to the damp squib of a Spring Statement earlier this week (what was the point?), there was better news this week about the rise of female investors.

I have never been the biggest fan of the House of Lords (an unelected second chamber doesn’t sound very twenty first century to me) but I cheered this week when their noble Lords took a closer look at the Pensions Bill and decided a £2,000 salary sacrifice cap, as the Government wants, was a pretty bad idea.

This is going to be a big year for pensions, particularly for pensions regulation which is at last showing some limited signs of moving forward.

I was mightily cheered this week by our story on the CII awarding Chartered Corporate Status to no less than eight Financial Planning firms.

I suspect many Financial Planners are still in two minds about the FCA’s targeted support plans which moved a step forward this week with a provisional go-live date of April.

It’s been very easy to get caught up in the economic doom and gloom recently, I’m certainly guilty of it myself, but sometimes you can’t always see the wood for trees.

A week or so after the Budget and I am still grappling with one of the most baffling and possibly vindictive moves I’ve ever seen in a Budget - the attack on pension savers using salary sacrifice.

The FCA’s latest Retail Mediation Activities Report - out this week - provides an interesting snapshot of the adviser sector. It shows a rather mixed picture but not necessarily a bad one.

This week I attended the Personal Finance Society’s 2025 National Conference in the cutting edge, and somewhat cavernous, new Maritime Halls at London’s Excel Centre in Docklands. I was impressed. It was a good conference demonstrating a great deal of confidence in the future.

This week we’ve published our latest issue of Financial Planning Today magazine and it includes a unique and fascinating review of a new generation of YouTubing Financial Planners bringing Financial Planning to the masses.

Over the past few years we’ve seen an enormous wave of M&A activity in the Financial Planning and Wealth Management sectors. It’s been largely unchecked - until now.