ICR281: A Festival of Financial Planning
Earlier this week I spent two days hosting Festival Radio at the Personal Finance Society Festival of Financial Planning.
The event at Birmingham NEC was the largest financial planning conference ever in the UK, with 3,300 delegates, 75 speakers and 100 exhibitors.
In this special episode of Informed Choice Radio, I share highlights from some of the the 39 interviews we recorded at the Festival, including conversations with Sir Vince Cable about Brexit, Baroness Ros Altmann on state pension inequality for 1950s born women, and Sir Steve Webb on pension freedom success.
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Personal finance news
-Average house prices are falling in four English regions. The latest report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors shows lower prices in London, the South East of England, East Anglia and the North-East.
-One week after a rise in interest rates, only 17 out of 150 savings providers have passed on higher interest rates to their customers. Tom Adams of consumer website Savings Champion said: “Some people could be worse off than before the base rate was cut last year.”
-A massive number of financial documents have been leaked to the press, exposing the tax planning practices of the ultra-wealthy. Individuals and corporations mentioned in the so-called Paradise Papers included the Queen’s private estate and Donald Trump’s commerce secretary.
-Sainsbury’s chief executive Mike Coupe has said the UK is “probably through the worst” of a weaker pound sterling and the impact of this on food price inflation. He told the BBC that food prices this Christmas would still be “about the same as they were two years ago”.
-A government-backed review has urged FTSE 350 companies to fill more board and senior leadership positions with talented women in a bid to make the UK a world-leader on gender diversity at the top of business.
Useful links
Baroness Ros Altmann interview in full
Sir Steve Webb interview in full
George Kinder interview in full
Justin Urquhart Stewart interview in full
Sir Vince Cable interview in full
Surviving AI: The promise and peril of artificial intelligence by Calum Chace
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