Good morning and welcome to your Morning Briefing for Friday 24 January 2025. To get this in your inbox every morning click here.
Chancellor to soften non-dom tax crackdown
The chancellor is to water down the non-domiciled tax changes amid reports of a growing exodus of millionaires from the UK.
Rachel Reeves said she would be tabling an amendment to the plans after “listening to the concerns” of non-domiciled residents.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Reeves told the Wall Street Journal: “We have been listening to the concerns that have been raised by the non-dom community.”
Dealing with clients without dependents
Protection advisers have a moral and regulatory obligation to take likely future circumstances into account in the same way that a pension adviser does when dealing with clients without dependent.
Alan Lakey, founder of CI Expert, argues that this includes the reasonable assumption that a single person will end up in a long-term relationship and that a couple will likely start a family.
The Office of National Statistics advises that 57.8% of households are comprised of couples, a figure unchanged since 2011.
The Flower Group launches M&A service for advisers
The Flower Group has launched its M&A support service for the wealth-management sector.
The service, which is designed to streamline and accelerate the acquisition process, provides end-to-end support for sellers, ensuring they are fully prepared for the demands of due diligence.
Leveraging over 20 years of M&A expertise, the service helps reduce transaction timelines by an average of six weeks, delivering faster, more efficient outcomes for both buyers and sellers.
Quote Of The Day
Wealthy individuals value stability and clarity in tax policy, and many will have already acted on the earlier announcements, relocating funds or even themselves to jurisdictions with more predictable regimes
– Mauro De Santis Bo, partner at GSB Wealth, comments on news that the UK is set to soften the non-dom tax changes
Stat Attack
New research from Standard Life, part of Phoenix Group, highlights how social media is playing an increasingly important role in retirement planning for Gen Z, the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials.
32%
of Gen Z use social media for information on retirement making it the single most used source.
14%
of Gen Z have used TikTok,
13%
have looked at LinkedIn,
12%
have turned to Twitter/X,
11%
have used Instagram and
10%
have relied on Facebook when looking for information or help in relation to retirement.
Despite a leaning towards social media, Gen Z hasn’t shunned more traditional information sources,
15%
have used their pension provider’s website,
13%
their pension provider’s annual statement and
9%
have used their pension provider’s app.
Source: Standard Life
In Other News
Utmost Wealth Solutions has launched Navigator, a quarterly technical briefing designed exclusively for the advisers of high- and ultra-high-net-worth individuals.
The ongoing briefings will leverage Utmost Wealth Solutions’ technical team, which boasts extensive expertise across tax, legal and regulatory matters.
The Winter 2025 update of Navigator covers the new landscape of retirement savings in the UK, which has evolved significantly following the Autumn Budget’s reforms of inheritance tax, the non-dom regime and other legislation impacting UK expats.
Aidan Golden, head of group technical services at Utmost Wealth Solutions, said: “Navigator will help key stakeholders in the industry, including intermediaries and advisers to HNW and UHNW individuals, stay informed on the most important issues and opportunities impacting the international wealth-management sector.”
Fintel has announced six new Defaqto Matrix 360 partnerships following the release of its software.
Customers including Zurich, RAC, Frontier, NFU Mutual and Policy Expert (trading name of QMetric Group Ltd) will be the first users of the software.
With a strong pipeline of future partnerships and plans for expansion beyond insurance, Matrix 360 is expected to bolster Fintel’s organic revenue growth, through enhancing Defaqto’s customer acquisition and transitioning existing users to the enhanced software.
Matrix 360 is a product intelligence software developed by Defaqto, one of the UK’s most trusted sources of financial product and market intelligence.
Providing a dynamic, comprehensive view of the insurance market, it enables insurers to continuously iterate and optimise their product portfolios and market positioning, while providing support in areas such as Consumer Duty compliance.
UK ministers explore shelving stricter audit rules for private companies (Financial Times)
Trump’s comments on tariffs, rates spark share rally (Reuters)
Chichester least affordable area outside London for first-time buyers (The Guardian)
Did You See?
Paul Harper, managing director of Paul Harper Search, explores the challenges face by financial planners to grow their client book.
He writes: If a company struggles to retain its advisers and service its clients effectively, it can leave the clients exposed and very open to approaches by their previous advisers – with whom they had built a relationship – when their restrictions come to an end.
Some companies are moving backwards in terms of adviser productivity, and I have heard the word ‘chaos’ used in connection with some of the PE-backed consolidators and evidently unstable advice teams.
One contact recently told me that their employer, a high-profile acquisitional consolidator, is “more of a disorganisation than an organisation”, with regular adviser resignations due to corporate inflexibility, poor client management, missing MI and disinterested leadership.
This puts even more pressure on the remaining advisers, who are left to complete an unreasonable number of client reviews in an unrealistic time period in pursuit of profit.
Read the full article here.
