Hello hello from a small and fairly imperfectly formed Airbnb on a busy intersection in south west London. I’m down here for lots of things this week, but mainly because Consumer Duty (the band) is playing the Schroders UK Platform Awards last night (I’m allowed to scramble my tenses because I’m writing this on Tuesday lunchtime). We’re also doing a charity battle of the bands thing at the 100 Club – the 100 Club! – on Thursday night with various other bands who are much, much better than us probably given we’ve had exactly one rehearsal for these shows, but we don’t care because it’s at the 100 Club and you don’t get to do that very often. I realise this is me telling you what’s on my mind rather than anything useful, but that’s life in the aluminium siding business.
Regular readers will be pleased to hear that this is the LAST CALL to anyone working in an advice business who’d like to come to the lang cat’s HomeGame 4 Edinburgh conference next week. The agenda is locked and looking properly good, there’s an extra mini-advice-tech-Catwalk for those who fancy it, Rory Bremner is sharpening his A material, we’ve ordered the food (which looks awesome) and you can even win a very fantoosh VR headset courtesy of main sponsor FNZ; none of your Temu rubbish here. If you’re in Scotland or can get to Edinburgh, get on it now.
We’re streaming most of it (not all) and if you can’t make it to Edinburgh you can book your streaming spot here. Pro tip: do not do not do NOT leave it till the day as we lock streaming registrations the night before; all to do with security on the streaming platform we use. So get booked on now; all streamers are free. No Bremner, no food, no tech demos but you will get the big sessions.
Away from our events and onto other, lesser events. It’s all about the Labour Party conference this week, and m’colleagues Tom McPhail and Alison Gay are there so you don’t have to be. Alison is doing a daily round-up of what she finds out in FT Adviser, and the first one is here. I’ve never been to a party conference and fully intend to see out my days without spoiling that run, but what I’ve learned from those who do thrive in such environments is that it’s sort of like a live-action chaos jigsaw except a lot less fun than that sounds. Basically you’re piecing together bits and bobs from all over the place to try and form a view of what’s coming down the tracks.
Is it CGT? Is it IHT? Is it tax relief or tax-free cash? The answer is probably yes, although our sector is now so good at catastrophising that almost anything less than a 100% tax on IFA fees will seem like a birthday present. But it’ll have to be at least one or two of the non-income based taxes unless a Labour government wants to hammer those who are just the wrong side of pensions credit harder than anyone else. You don’t have to be Punxsutawney Phil to prognosticate that some burden-sharing is about to happen.
The thing I’ve been pondering is whether it matters all that much. How many planners reading this create plans of building and maintaining wealth predicated mainly on surfing tax subsidies? Maybe I’m idealistic but I don’t think it’s that many. So yeah, maybe there are some restrictions coming on massively tax-efficient retirement savings. Maybe the taxation of cap gains and income will be less differentiated. The below-the-line anonymous keyboard warriors will bloviate and probably find a way to call it ‘woke’. And all of it will need worked through.
All of which, it seems to me, is a massive advert for financial advice and financial planning. The client with a well-structured plan will be just fine. The one who rejected all that and geared up to buy more rental properties to flip; maybe not so much. All I’m saying is: don’t let this moment to demonstrate your value go by.
I won’t be Updating next week as – don’t know if you knew – we’ve got an event going on. One of the South Cats will be in the hotseat and very fine it will be.
And your music assignment this week – well, it’s my new favourite song in the setlist. Here’s a brilliant ska cover of Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy by The Interrupters. Has anyone got a trombone handy?
