News

For some time now the government has been promising an online ‘pensions dashboard’ that will let savers view and manage all their pension arrangements in one place. Meanwhile, private pension providers are competing to deliver a similar service to cover their own products. So who’ll win the battle of the dashboards?

If you have a large estate, or own more than one property, your family may lose a sizeable chunk of your legacy to inheritance tax. A financial adviser can help you minimise this loss – but how do they go about it? Alistair Fraser of Cockburn Lucas explains how he helped one client in this situation.

Nearly half of the UK’s self-employed workers may have to rely on just the State Pension in retirement – which a recent report has found to be the ‘least generous’ in the developed world. As the gig economy grows, a potential pensions time bomb is growing with it.

If you access your pension via a drawdown scheme, your provider may soon recommend an ‘upper limit’ on the income you take. The new measures are intended to protect pensioners against using up their savings too fast, as many are still in the dark as to the underlying risks of drawdown schemes.

Funding long-term care can be the biggest financial challenge of later life. Now a new pension-insurance hybrid has been proposed to help care recipients and their families meet this challenge. How would it differ from what’s already available – and will it ever appear?

Some borrowers are living with a sword hanging over their heads: a mortgage they have little or no hope of repaying. One possible answer is the “lifetime mortgage” – but it’s hardly ideal. We explore this nerve-wracking scenario and offers some possible solutions.

For the first time ever, the High Court has ordered the perpetrators of pension scams to repay the money they took from their victims. But how can you avoid falling into such a trap in the first place?

Congratulations – you’re a year closer to retirement. But if it’s imminent, you’ll soon have to decide how you should access your pension pot. With the economic landscape changing all the time, pensions expert Billy Burrows brings us his regular update on the ongoing debate: drawdown or annuity?

Does it look as if your estate is large enough to be subject to inheritance tax? If you take action soon enough, you may find you have the power to change that. Marcus Dodds, Financial Planning Consultant at Armstrong Watson, explains how.

Philip Hammond’s first Autumn Budget brought a windfall for first-time buyers, with a spectacular slashing of stamp duty. Will it finally unclog the UK’s housing market? We look at this and other key announcements from a Budget that focused largely on the young.