Can you believe it, it’s the last Update of the 24/25 tax year. Please note our helplines and website will be closed from 2pm today until midnight on 6 April 2025 for planned maintenance, and all new subscriptions for pensions and ISAs should be placed into a time machine set for six weeks ago. Consolidated tax certificates will be placed in a secret location accessible only to bees on a date of our choosing. Thank you for your business, as we strive to become the IFA sector’s most trusted partner and empower millions of investors to live the lives they want to live.  

(Somewhere, deep in a provider’s marketing department, someone just read that and went “oooh, not bad”.) 

I let you off the regulation and policy stuff last week, but there’s just too much viral load in it to repeat this week; it’s spilling out and there’s only so much you can do to resist. So affix your regulatory pulse oximeter and let’s DO THIS.  

In the style of the lang cat’s very own Regulatory Tracker (available at modest cost with Analyser subscriptions, cures all known regulatory ills, etc), I’ll mention a few bits quickfire style, then perform a dramatic coup de theatre and link them all together in a feat of dextrous lexical virtuosity that will leave you both sated and hungry for more. And I might mention, if you’re ever not sure what to think about regulatory developments, there’s a good chance our regulatory expert-cats Alison Gay and Mike Barrett may well have done the thinking for you already, and again you get the fruits of their labours in Tracker.  

• First up, we gots to do the FS25/2 review of regulation following the introduction of Consumer Duty. Much of this has to do with consumer credit and banking – you think you’ve got it bad – but there are a few bits worthy of your attention.  

• And if we’re mucking around with stuff, why don’t we have a go at ISAs?  

• And if we’re mucking around with ISAs, why don’t we muck around with pensions a bit too? 

So there’s plenty going on. And the red thread running through it isn’t about pounding you, or anything like it. It’s about areas of higher risk – making sure consumer credit and depositor protections are all Consumer Dutery; trying to get what one wealth manager described to me as “muppet money” out of cash ISAs (what a nice man he was) and into the stock markets, and maybe getting pension assets to help people pay more stamp duty. If you’re thinking this is all in the service of the “growth” agenda we have heard so much about, you’d be right.  

Regulation, like teenager-style romance, is a pendulum. You soar to the highest highs and then crash to the deepest depths. Actually that’s not what pendulums do at all, is it? They swing from side to side. But you get the idea.  

The point is that if you read the room – something I am often fantastically bad at – you’ll notice that after a good while of you being in the spotlight, a risk-based regulator with limited resources and a lot on its plate has shone its spotlight on some other places for now. The ongoing advice review found few systemic issues outside the big firm nastiness we’ve talked about before. There are always things our corner of financial services can do better. But is it too far to say we’re broadly on the right track? I don’t think it is, and that should give you confidence for a big tax year to come.  

And your music choice this week is from a band who are fairly new to me but came highly recommended by one of our MVCs (Most Valued Correspondents). This is a brand new slice of fried gold from the Raveonettes and has just the right amount of hooky goodness under a massive blanket of reverb, just the way I like it. Plus they’re Danish and so were at least some of the Polson bloodline, so that makes them instantly cool. Please insert Killer into your hearing apparatus and enjoy.