He has done scores of these in the UK and in Europe, the aim being to take this guide book along to recreate the exact same routes Mr Bradshaw took.

The latest series was using the 1913 version of the guide and it was fascinating to see old film footage of a bygone era.

It was not that long ago. In fact, my grandparents were born before then but in many ways it did feel like much more than a century ago.

Air travel still involved bits of wood and string and the train was the way to travel over longer distances, taking into account that roads were quite often nothing but dirt tracks and cars were extremely basic and slow.

Michael is a strong advocate of the train, particularly steam trains. Seeing his face light up when he was allowed to drive a steam train reminded me of my daughter Charlotte aged 6 on Christmas morning starting to rip into her presents!

Because the programme covered many interesting rural lines, Michael was able to tell the varied story of the towns and villages he visited and quite often how the railway transformed them.

In particular, Scotland suddenly found that from the Victorians onwards huge amounts of visitors arrived in places that were blessed with amazing scenery but were previously inaccessible.

Britain was booming, and most were totally unaware of the horror of war just a mere year away.

I was thinking of this programme when my friend in Kent announced his latest jaunt. David is retiring at the end of the year and his plan is to rent in south west Spain for a year to see if the reality is anything like the lovely theory of relaxing in a warm climate drinking a cool beer and checking out the Tapas.

In the meantime he is fitting in a few mini breaks, visiting places he has not been to as well as revisiting a few favourites.

Sometimes I am available to tag along and we recently visited the Battle of Waterloo site just south of Brussels.

For once we were unlucky with the weather and it was, shall we say, very bracing!

It was well worth seeing though, especially if you like military history, and the visitor centre was well thought out with film clips to illustrate how Wellington and Napoleon slogged it out on that fateful day in 1815.

David has excelled himself with his latest trip, which was inspired by a Euro Rail email offering low cost first class travel.

As he lives near the Euro Tunnel, such journeys are fairly straightforward and he really enjoys looking at where he can get to and find out what there is to see and do.

One of the routes that took his fancy was Ashford to Aix, 30 miles north of Marseilles in the south of France.

Even going via Paris, the journey will only take a little over 6 hours! By car it’s 750 miles and would take around double that time driving with a couple of stops.

Aix has a Mediterranean climate with 300 days of sunshine a year so the weather should be nice and warm.

I am sure David will enjoy the sun!

It is lovely to see him enjoying himself and he is due to visit us up north in May. It is no surprise that he will be using the train and by booking ahead you can get first class travel at very reasonable prices.

Beng David of course he won’t be doing a straightforward Ashford to Newcastle. Oh no!

He’s decided to go via Inverness! The deal he got was so good, it meant it was worthwhile having a jaunt up there before heading back down to Northumberland!

So all in all we are great believers in travelling this way, and as the advert used to say, ‘Let the train take the strain’

Q. I have read in the press that the number of Financial Advisers was set to fall when the new rules on professionalism and fees came in this January.

Has this actually happened, and if so why?

A. This was indeed widely predicted, and yes in practice if you look at the latest figures from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) (now known as the Financial Conduct Authority), numbers have fallen.

The FSA have said that the number of advisers was:

On 31st December 2011 – 25,616

On 31st December 2012 – 20,453

This is a fall of 20%.

When it comes to Bank advisers, the fall is even higher at 44%.

As to why this is happening, there seems to be a combination of factors, with the introduction of the Retail Distribution Review recently a big influence which has led to:

• Higher professional standards, with many advisers needing to take additional exams (the majority have completed this step)

• New levels of price transparency (fees not commission) to ensure clients are clear what the advice is costing them

• Older advisers simply deciding to retire 

• Many Banks realising that they are simply not capable to rise to these higher standards or choosing not to

As FSA head of investment intermediaries Linda Woodall said: 

“Those who remain in the industry have shown they are committed to increasing the professionalism of the sector”.

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves!

If you’ve got a question you’d like to ask us just contact us (if we publish it we’ll keep your name anonymous).

Some of the figures are quite simply staggering!

The headline above is backed up by statistics from Xpro, who are a charity for ex-players. Their figures show that:

• Three in every five Premier League players are bankrupt within five years of retirement despite earning an average of £30,000 a week

• One in three are divorced within a year of retirement

Some individual cases are highlighted:

• Lee Hendrie formerly of Aston Villa & England

• John Barnes who played for Liverpool & England

• Goalkeeper Brad Friedel of Tottenham & USA

• Keith Gillespie of Manchester City & N. Ireland

• Forward Carl Cort who played for Newcastle

• John Arne Riise, ex Liverpool star, now at Fulham

The list goes on!

Further, according to The Independent*, these statistics are almost identical in American professional sports. In 2009, a report showed that almost 4 in 5 of NFL players went bankrupt or suffered “financial stress” within a mere two years of retirement.

Basketball is no exception, with 60% of players losing all their money within five years.

So, why do so many professional sportspeople have financial problems when they have earned a lot of money throughout their careers?

After all, looking at their career probable earnings (10 years) after tax, a good Premiership footballer would probably earn say £8m. This is without the other income streams such as sponsorship.

Well, the Independent’s article came up with several common reasons:

• Excessive spending, with a typical scenario being that players wanted to outdo each other with cars and watches and other material goods

• Gambling & drinking affected a few individuals

• Investing in risky tax avoidance schemes which HMRC subsequently disqualified

But the overriding problem in virtually all these cases is the failure to plan.

Of course there are success stories, such as footballer Robbie Fowler who has invested in property for many years.

He even runs courses to show how he achieved this – of course he looked ahead and planned.

There are many old sayings on this subject:

• ‘Failing to plan is planning to fail’

• ‘Wealth isn’t what you spend, it’s what you keep’

• ‘A goal without a plan is just a wish’

• ‘If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else’ 

The above very much resonates with us, as we spend a lot of time with clients looking at the question that most ask us.

That is ‘am I going to outlive my money?’

So creating your very own financial map or sat nav is one of the most important planning exercises you will ever do.

Comparing income and assets to expenditure now and in the future, taking into account taxation and inflation is crucial.

After all if you don’t know where you are going how do you know if and when you arrive?

But this does not mean that you should live like a pauper now to live like a King later!

One of the issues we cover with clients is (excluding long term care) ‘are you going to be more active and need more money in your 50s and 60s than, say, after age 75?’

The answer may well be obvious, but this means your life planning strategy should reflect this very important point.

Being the richest person in the graveyard is perhaps not the best plan in the world!

Another new client we saw recently was considering increasing his pension contributions. When we created his financial map, it looked exactly like a classic mountain shape.

The triangle meant he was amassing wealth up until retirement, and then just as quickly spending it to enjoy life on the other side. Perfectly valid of course as building wealth to spend later is what it is all about when you plan for retirement. But it was possible that money would be tight say from their late 70s.

So the logical thing to do would be to recommend investing an additional £2,000 per month into a pension, or maximise ISAs each and every year for the next 10 years.

However, on questioning whether they would be still living in their huge house once he had retired, the answer was definitely not.

So we built in downsizing in their late 60s to their financial map, and lo and behold the problem was solved. There was simply no need to invest more than they were already doing.

So the spare money they had could be used to accelerate the mortgage being paid off and to ensure they had the money to enjoy great holidays three times a year now, which was one of their important goals.

Key Considerations

If you want to avoid the pitfalls of not being organised and ensure you are doing the best you can to find financial security and financial independence in your retirement, take heed from the great investor Warren Buffett:

“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago”

Action Point

If you have put off sorting out your finances and feel that there is little time to do so, try and make time or hire a Financial Planner who will do most of the ‘heavy lifting’ for you.

Most of all – take action!

You can read a related article on our website.

Unfortunately, it also involves watching our football team – Sunderland AFC.

As we’ve aged we’ve come to the realisation that the football match is simply the excuse to get together and, in fact, it would be fair to say that if the game was postponed at the last minute, there’d be no tears shed from our corner.

If you follow football, you’ll know what I’m talking about. SAFC are not exactly playing attractive football this season, which can’t be good news for the Sky Sports executives when we’re scheduled for a live game!

After a quick journey down on the train from Newcastle we were soon in Shepherds Bush, en route to Queens Park Rangers. After a couple of beers we were soon in the ground.

I won’t bore you with the details of the game, suffice to say our team lost (again) and QPR were deserved winners.

Back to the pub, then we popped into a fantastic Indian round the corner, The Ajanti, which I’d highly endorse.

The evening ended back at the hotel where we discovered some of the local Phillipine community enjoying a karaoke night.

Of course, it was rude not to join in

Now, we just need to try and meet up next year without the football…

On business related issues, we have two great resources to share with you.

Samera accountants has published its ‘Predictions 2013′ for UK Dentists (yes, I realise we’re nearly a quarter of the way through the year already!).

I’ve read it and it provides tips on which areas you should be aware of and taking action on in your business.

Here’s the announcement from Arun Mehra at Samera:

So what does 2013 bring for you, and what strategies will you need to employ to make it a better year than 2012?

You can grab my “Predictions 2013″ summary report which includes my views on what I think will arise in 2013 for Dentists. It is an honest account of where things currently stand. It is only 8 pages, so grab a cuppa and take 5 minutes time out to have a read.

Finally, I will leave you with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt in 1910 at the Sorbonne which I think is quite apt in these times:

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Click on this link to access the pdf.

Next, investing your income or capital can be a daunting prospect as there appears to be so many choices.

Sensible Investing TV has published an excellent film, featuring some of the world’s top economists and academics, that I believe is essential viewing for all investors.

It covers (from their website):

• How the claims of active fund managers to be able to beat the market are largely a myth
• How costs are the biggest drag on performance – and why active costs more
• How passive investing offers the best experience for the vast majority of investors
• The benefits of a diversified portfolio in guaranteeing consistent returns
• Why passive investing is better for your health
• Why active investing has held sway for so many years…
    … but why things may be changing
• And why passive is the rational, mathematically proven route to investing success

As you may know, we employ a passive / index fund approach so the cynic may not be surprised that we’re mentioning this resource.

A fair point.

However, we used to use active fund managers until we could no longer ignore the research. After all, it was (and still is) our duty to our clients to find them the best solution for their investments. 

I do believe the information in the film could potentially make a massive impact to how all investors deal with their money.

Here’s the link, and we’d love to hear your feedback.

Q. Can you please clarify what I will be asked to pay into the NHS Pension Scheme from April 2013 as I am aware that the contribution percentages are increasing for members?

A. Yes, you’re correct. You will need to pay more to be a member of the scheme. Whilst not great news, it’s still an excellent scheme that we believe offers fantastic value for money when faced with the alternatives.

Here is a table of the 2013/14 contribution rates, including the current year:

Full-time pay range (2012/13)          2012/13          2013/14

Up to £15,278                                    5.0%               5.0% 
£15,279 to £21,175                             5.0%               5.3%
£21,176 to £26,557                             6.5%               6.8%
£26,558 to £48,982                             8.0%               9.0%
£48,983 to £69,931                             8.9%               11.3%
£69,932 to £110,273                           9.9%               12.3%
Over £110,273                                   10.9%              13.3%

Now there’s new competition – from cats.

The Observer newspaper staged an experiment, pitting a panel of market professionals and a group of students against a ginger feline called Orlando in a competition to see who would have the most success in picking stocks in 2012.(1)

Each team invested a notional £5,000 in five companies from the FTSE All-Share index at the start of the year.

After every three months, they could exchange any stocks, replacing them with others from the index.

The professionals used their experience, insights and market knowledge to select stocks. The cat’s method was rather less elaborate.

Orlando simply threw a toy mouse onto a grid of numbers allocated to stocks in the index!

The newspaper reports that while the cat was trailing the pros at the end of the September quarter, his feline intuition kicked in the final months.

As a result, his portfolio increased to end 2012 at £5,542. This represented a gain of nearly 11% for the year, outpacing the index’s 8.2% rise and shading the professionals’ portfolio by 7%.

While this experiment was hardly scientific, it does provide another reminder about the difficulty of generating consistent above-market returns by picking individual stocks or making forecasts. And it’s something to keep in mind when you are confronted by media and market prognostications during 2013.

In the US context, Bloomberg highlighted this difficulty recently in a piece entitled Almost All of Wall St Got 2012 Market Calls Wrong.(2)

While many forecasters began 2012 by issuing downbeat calls for equity markets – based on the ongoing Euro Zone crisis, China’s slowdown and US political logjams – the market value of global equities increased by about $US6.5 trillion last year.

As one analyst quoted by Bloomberg noted, many pundits were too wrapped up in the “fear du jour” and failed to keep an eye on the big picture.

So it was in Australia, where one prominent television finance commentator said at the end of 2011:

“The conditions are in place for a panic sell-off. It is not certain that it will happen…but the risk is now such that you must take action.  I will be significantly reducing my already reduced exposure to equities possibly to zero”.(3)

More fool him and commiserations to anyone who had the misfortune to act on his advice, because the Australian equity market delivered a total return in 2012 of 20% in local currency terms. Gains in many other equity markets were even stronger.

It should be plain by now that basing your investment strategy on someone else’s forecast is a haphazard way to build wealth. No matter how diligent and expert your forecaster is, unexpected events have a way of messing up their expectations.

As well, those who insist on believing that forecasting is a sustainable investment strategy tend to under-rate the capacity of capital markets to very quickly build all those expectations into prices.

You think markets will tank/soar this year? So does someone else and they’re trading off that belief.

Key Considerations

The good news is you don’t need a crystal ball to build wealth. You just need a regularly rebalanced diversified portfolio of assets designed for your needs and risk appetite. You also need to keep an eye on costs and taxes.

Most of all you need to keep your cool and exercise patience.

Like a cat.

1. ‘Orlando is the Cat’s Whiskers of Stock Picking’, The Observer, Jan 13, 2013   
2. ‘Almost All of Wall St Got 2012 Market Calls Wrong’, Bloomberg, Jan 4, 2013   
3. Alan Kohler, Business Spectator, Dec 19, 2011

When I was younger the expression ‘time flies’ was simply that – an expression.

Now I find myself saying this with real meaning to all and sundry, and when with retired clients and the subject comes up, they nod sagely as if to say ‘and it speeds up even more as you get older!’

So with this firmly in mind, I am making a big effort to move forward with the novel I am writing – working title ‘The Fight For Scotland’.

It is about Robert the Bruce and an ancestor of mine (perhaps) William Irving, who was the King’s armour bearer through the Scottish wars of independence.

After masses of research I have now moved on to writing several pivotal scenes and the feedback from a few fans of historical fiction has been very positive, which of course does help!

One of the side effects of being immersed in the era 1286 to 1314 is that ideas and plot variations keep popping into my head all the time. So I write this down and after a week of this it’s easy to have dozens of notes to sift through.

I am also reading books that are similar to what I am aiming for and it was a bit of a shock that one scene in particular was very similar to one I wrote quite a while back!

What I am finding is that in order to establish a character that the reader should like and be rooting for, there are certain common techniques. Of course I am also noticing this all the time now whereas before I was simply enjoying the story.

What is also true, as several authors have commented, is that the characters become very real to you, and you feel that you must do their story justice!

Keeping on the subject of the arts, I was able to visit a very interesting and unusual Theatre recently. It is called The Orange Tree, and is ‘in the round’.

After seeing clients around Ealing in London, I drove over to Richmond and met a friend there to see the classic farce ‘Sauce For The Goose’ by Georges Feydeau who wrote around a century ago.

It was excellent, with the audience literally right next to the action, and with only 172 seats it created a very intimate atmosphere.

The performance had lots of laughs and was incredible value for London at £20 a ticket. If you are a theatre fan it is well worth having a gander (sorry) at other productions!

My daughter Charlotte is also into acting and is appearing in our village production of ‘The Sound of Music’ as a nun.

Things seem to be going well and she has being rehearsing regularly for 3 months now.

The shows are next week so fingers crossed.

Back to the history theme and did you see the TV show about archaeologists finding the grave of Richard 111?

It was found after a lot of detective work using old maps and the theory that the King was buried in Greyfriars Church.

This led them to a car park in Leicester city centre and the exact spot where the skeleton was found was just 3 feet under a parking bay with the capital letter R on it! 

Incredible, you couldnt make it up!

Hats off to the team who presented the story and evidence.

The findings were:

• Yes, he had a crooked back
• No, he didn’t have a withered arm
• He had appalling head injuries resulting from the Battle of Bosworth Field
• His body was stabbed after death, probably as he was paraded through the streets of Leicester
• He had fairly thin bones with some feminine characteristics
• His DNA was a match to two descendants

They even reconstructed the skull and presented us with what he actually had looked like. It was not dissimilar to the famous painting we would all associate with him, although definitely less cruel looking.

We must remember I suppose that history is usually told by the victor and the Tudors felt it important to demonise Richard to help hide the fact that Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne was not a good one.

This demonisation continued into Elizabeth 1′s reign with Shakespeare famously having a go as well!

In fact Richard seemed to be an enlightened king for the Fifteenth Century. He:

• Introduced bail and stopped the intimidation of juries
• Set up a council of advisors that diplomatically included Lancastrian supporters, traditionally his enemies
• Administered justice for the poor as well as the rich
• Introduced posting stations for royal messengers between the London and the north
• Encouraged the importation of books
• Had laws written in English instead of Latin so that ordinary people could understand their own laws

Quite a list!

You can read about the discovery of the grave of Richard 111 here.

Q. I have invested diligently over many years to maximise my eligibility to personal pensions and have consequently invested 20-30% of my private earnings in the majority of tax years.

This has resulted in me accruing funds worth around £300,000. As I am approaching retirement, I asked my financial adviser to find out what sort of pension I could expect.

Suffice it to say that I was not impressed!

The (annuity) rates offered seemed very low to me compared to what I was told I would get in the 1990′s!

I feel very disillusioned but want to grasp the nettle sooner rather than later. What pointers can you give me? 

A. This is a subject that many pension investors, having saved over 20 years or more, feel very strongly about.

Annuity rates (the pension you get for a given lump sum) have been falling for many years now.

Research from MGM Advantage published last autumn, illustrated that annuity rates had fallen by 7% over the previous three months. This was the highest quarterly fall in annuity rates since they started their research in August 2009.

Since that point the average fall has been 20%!

One of the reasons given for this is the large fall in gilt yields (a key indicator as to which direction rates for annuities might go). In addition, the new EU rules on solvency for insurance companies could ensure annuity rates are pushed even lower.

So reviewing matters straight away is certainly what we would recommend.

However, before you do that it may be prudent to take a step back and view the decision within the context of your overall affairs.

To us the most important element of comprehensive financial planning is marrying your goals in life to the resources you have and we’d suggest you should try to answer the question ‘am I going to run out of money before I die?’

You have asked for pointers, and so without going into everything in detail, we suggest you:

• Work out what you need as post tax monthly income in retirement
• Check if you will have any capital expenditure and, if so, how much and when
• See if you want to gift to your children
• Ensure you do not have an issue with the value of your overall pension pots, known as the Lifetime Allowance rule (the current allowance is £1.5m)

So now you are hopefully clear on what you need, you next need to analyse what resources you have to help.

• What is the value of your NHS Pension?
• Are there any other pensions for you and your spouse/partner?
• What State Pensions will you have?
• What other investments do you have?
• Do you have any property investments?
• Do you plan to downsize and, if so, when?
• Are you likely to inherit?

Once you have addressed these issues you can then start to build a strategy that is best for you. We would recommend you use a Financial Planner who can provide measurement by using a cash flow forecast that will include risk management.

Once you have your own ‘financial map’, it will enable you to decide which pension options are the most likely to deliver what you want.

There are several ways to take pension benefits that do not involve annuities, certainly to start with.

These include:

• Income Drawdown, which allows you to take income from your pension fund while the fund remains invested and continues to benefit from any potential fund growth

• Flexible Income Drawdown , a variant of the above which allows people who are already drawing a pension in excess of £20,000 pa to take their entire fund in cash, 25% of which is tax free

As ever there are pros & cons to everything, so we urge you to take professional advice.

We hope these suggestions help you and underline the importance of ensuring you have a strategy before you make any decisions.

This probably leaves around one million people who are very likely to be hit by the ‘high income child benefit charge’.

As the vast majority of our clients earn well in excess of the earnings figures discussed below, this is an issue that will affect many, and perhaps making an informed choice now can make matters simpler.

So what are these new rules and should you take action to opt out of receiving child benefit?

From When Does It Apply?

• New rules came into force on 7th January 2013 and any benefits received after this date will be taxed according to the new rules, see below

Who Is Affected?

• An individual, or their partner, who earn over £50k in a given tax year and who are receiving Child Benefit

• A tax rate of 1% for each £100 of income applies for those who earn between £50,000 and £60,000 pa

• anyone who earns over £60,000 will be charged an equal amount to the amount they receive as Child Benefit

How Do The Government Clawback This Benefit?

• Through income tax, although HMRC cannot claim monies until your exact earnings are known

• So it is likely that the earliest the tax will apply will be January 2014 through self-assessment & PAYE

• In later years tax codes could be adjusted for higher earners so that on PAYE it is clawed back monthly

Can This Tax Be Avoided?

• There are limited options here, but as your income level is calculated by assessing your gross income less any allowable deductions, then gifts to charity and pension contributions could be used to reduce the assessable income

• For those earning between £50,000 and £60,000, the new tax charge would be less than the full child benefit­ received, so the household would, be better off if the child benefit claimant continues to receive it and the higher income partner pays the tax charge.

Crucially, women still need to register for child benefit and then opt out to receive national insurance credits towards their state pension. 

Should I Opt Out?

• It is perhaps not a decision to be taken lightly as it means that a couple with, say, two children would not receive the £146 per month due

• However, if earnings for one in the household is well above £60,000 pa, and they have no intention of gifting large amounts to charity or investing in a pension, then it does make sense to opt out if for no other reason than it makes your tax affairs simpler and could even avoid running the risk of a fine for getting it wrong

How Do You Opt Out?

• If you were extremely efficient and opted out by 7th January, then well done and no action needs to be taken other than to check that HMRC cancels your Child Benefit

• If you decide that this is your best course of action then you need to submit a declaration to the Child Benefit Office, which needs to be completed by the person who receives the benefit, usually the mother

• You can access this form here    

Key Considerations

Take the time to work out if you are affected by this new rule. If you are, then decide what you need to do and take action if necessary.

If you want to opt out, contact the Child Benefit Office as soon as possible to make your tax affairs as simple as you can.

Q. I’ve been advised to consider practice overheads insurance. Is it worth it?

A. Dental practices and businesses such as accountants and solicitors (and others who work on a fee basis) are exposed to expense, turmoil and risk when it comes to absence of their key people.

It can take a long time to build up a loyal client-base and no time at all to lose it, through the absence of a key person.

When considering how your business would fare, it’s prudent to ask yourself 3 key questions.

1. How long could we keep going?

   Just because you or one of your key people is not working doesn’t mean that the bills stop coming in: rent and service charges, council tax, utility bills, equipment finance, telephone and internet costs, professional fees and staff costs.

   No doubt the business could probably keep going for a while: 2 weeks?  4 weeks?  Longer? How long?

   A well-run business may have a contingency fund but, once that is exhausted, who pays the absent person’s proportion of the overheads?  Would you look to him or her to continue funding the business overheads even though he or she is not working?

   At a time when his or her priority is likely to be keeping the family afloat by paying the mortgage,   school fees and so on?

2. What’s the impact of prolonged absence?

   Having worked out that your business could survive for a while, what happens then?  Some clients will still come to you and perhaps colleagues will be able to rally-round to provide cover.

   But how long before ‘rally-round fatigue’ sets in and people start to resent working evenings and   weekends to keep the business viable? 

   How long before clients choose to go elsewhere because they can’t get an appointment when they want one?

   You could choose to bring in a locum to cover for you, or to share your workload with a similar practice nearby on a reciprocal basis.  There could be significant costs associated with each approach and these will come at a time when you already have to meet your regular overheads, despite bringing in no income.

   A prolonged absence also means that you might be forced into selling your share in the business or even the entire business, at a time when its financial stability is becoming precarious.

3. Who should we insure?

   The people whose absence means the income to the business will suffer are obviously key to this question. 

   You can choose to insure the main fee earner or all the fee earners. The amount of insurance would generally equate to the financial contribution that each person makes to the overheads of the business.

   Some practices or businesses leave it to each individual to arrange his or her own insurance.

   Unfortunately, this can mean that each person ends up with a different type of cover and those who don’t get around to it end up with no cover at all.

   A ‘group’ policy lets the business or practice control who is covered thereby reducing any business risk and/or unexpected expense if someone falls ill and needs to claim.

   It covers all the fee-earners and ensures that they are all insured on the same basis which should prevent difficulties at the claims stage when Dr A’s claim is declined because he or she had bought a policy which is more restrictive than a colleague’s policy.

   Most providers will be able to apportion the premiums so that, if the business wants to, it can ‘charge out’ the relevant proportion of the premium to each individual.

   Businesses which fail to consider these questions before illness strikes are storing up problems for the future.

   And businesses which fail to consider these questions before illness strikes may not have a future.

Our thanks to Lynda Cox of Practice Cover for answering this Q&A. Practice Cover provides straightforward and competitively priced locum insurance and practice overheads insurance to GPs, dentists, vets, opticians and allied health professionals.