Traditionally, most people get nowhere near breaching the pensions lifetime allowance, but that’s likely to change over the next five years. The lifetime pensions allowance is currently £1,073,100. In his Spring Budget on 3 March 2021, Chancellor Rishi Sunak revealed that this would be frozen until 5 April 2026 – along with a raft of[…]
Personal tax planning in 2021/22 If there’s one thing to take away from Spring Budget 2021, it’s taking charge of your personal finances is going to be increasingly important over the next five years. With the financial fallout from COVID-19 over the last year being the fiscal equivalent of fighting a war at more than[…]
Get on track for a comfortable retirement. If you have a defined contribution pension scheme – whether private or through your employer – your retirement savings have probably been hit quite hard by the COVID-19 pandemic over the past 12 months. That’s because pension funds invested in the stock market and recent turbulence, which has[…]
Policy success, but headache for employers? Back in 2012, less than half of private-sector employees in the UK had a pension scheme. Today, that figure is 85% and this huge increase is due to the successful rollout of auto-enrolment. It started with the largest companies and now applies to employers of all sizes with staff[…]
Billions of pounds lost in unclaimed funds Helping you plan for your retirement is one of our core services, ensuring you are prepared when the time comes to call it a day. With medical advances enabling more people to live for longer, the average person who retires at 65 lives for another 20 years. According[…]
Are you on track for a comfortable retirement? All of us dream of the day we can retire, saying goodbye to the alarm clock and commute, filling our days with sun-soaked beach holidays, leisurely rounds of golf, or cruising the world. As delightful as that sounds, the days when people can retire at a certain[…]
Small businesses employing 40-49 workers will begin complying with their auto-enrolment duties from 1 August. The dates when businesses begin complying with auto-enrolment are known as staging dates. From this date employers are required to have enrolled employees onto a workplace pension scheme, written to staff members and signed the declaration of compliance. The staging[…]
A guide to the finer points of auto-enrolment. The process of auto-enrolment continues to rumble on quietly with the majority of companies passing their staging dates without major incident. However, for the few that fail to comply with their workplace obligations, the consequences can be costly in time and resources. The Pensions Regulator has released[…]
Retirees plan to use a mix of assets such as pensions, cash ISAs and savings to fund their retirement, according to a survey by YouGov commissioned by Friends Life. The survey polled 7,000 people across the UK and found that many are planning to use a diverse portfolio of assets to see them through retirement.[…]