National Savings Interest Rate Changes

From the 1st May 2017, National Savings will be reducing the rates of interest across all of their cash savings products, including Premium Bonds and Direct ISAs. The reduction will affect existing accounts as well as new.

This follows reductions in interest rates across the savings market after the Bank of England's reduction of the base rate by 25 basis points, to 0.25pc in August 2016. Ben Allen, Managing Director of Allen Tomas & Co said "Once again this is another blow for savers and the search for decent returns on deposits becomes harder. NS&I will remain popular due to the fact that they are backed by HM Treasury, however I expect more people to look to the stock markets for a portion of their cash in order to improve their long term returns".

Please contact us should you wish to review your existing Savings and Investments.

Budget 2021 – Small Business Owners

The planned increases to Corporation Tax Rates and what these mean for small business owners. Who will be affected? The corporation tax ‘main rate’ (currently 19%) is scheduled to increase considerably to 25% by April 2023. A new ‘small profits rate’ is also being introduced for business which make less than £50,000 profit a year. The main rate will be applied to businesses making more than £250,000 profit a year, with a ‘tapering’ of the two rates between these amounts. Those companies under this lower £50,000 threshold will find themselves relatively unaffected by the new measures. Businesses which find themselves between these rates will arguably be affected worst, having smaller profits to pay the extra tax from. For these companies, particularly which find themselves just over each of the limits announced, or indeed the tapering limits yet to be confirmed; additional tax planning will become an essential exercise going forward. Fortunately, these same companies will hav...

Why do we use Rayner Spencer Mills Research (RSMR)?

As part of our centralised investment process we use the research services of RSMR to construct our range of model portfolios. RSMR first launched their online fund ratings service for advisers back in 2007 and this offers us the widest range of ratings covering active and passive funds, Socially Responsible Investment-themed funds, multi-asset fund ranges, investment trusts and Discretionary Fund Managers. Their ratings are awarded following a rigorous process and are supported by factsheets and guides. Each factsheet provides background information, a summary of the investment process, comments and opinions. The team at RSMR have many years’ experience and maintain their market knowledge by meeting with the fund management community, market analysis and their own continuing professional development. Their research is completely impartial and they cover the whole market composed of all funds across the universe of the Investment Association (IA) sectors. RSMR review and research fun...

Coronavirus (Covid 19) – Business Contingency Plan

Following the recent announcement by the government confirming their intention to move to a ‘delay’ phase relating to the control and containment of the Coronavirus, we wanted to share with you our business contingency plans which will go some way to safeguard the business operations as well as supporting you. You'll be reassured to know that business can be conducted by post, online, over the phone or through your portals. Should we immediately deploy our work from home plan, workflow and call answering will continue as normal, within the parameters of home working. However, please be patient with us as client reviews and new business is taking slightly longer than our standard turnaround times. We will monitor and continue to update you during this slow down. If anyone has been in contact with someone who has the virus, and/or are showing symptoms, they have been instructed to self-isolate and update management on a regular basis. We will continue to follow Government guideli...

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