Author: Aisha Mahmood

UK equity fund outflows have now reached £15.16bn since June 2025, according to the latest Fund Flow Index from Calastone, as August marked the fourteenth month of net redemptions in the last fifteen. For investors managing drawdown portfolios or self-invested personal pensions, the persistence of this trend raises genuine questions about asset allocation and the risk of sitting too long in cash. The Pattern Behind UK Equity Fund Outflows August’s net outflow from equity funds came to £315m, a considerably smaller figure than the £1.61bn withdrawn across all equity funds in July. Calastone’s data also shows that UK equity funds…

Retirement psychology and financial planning are converging into a single discipline, and advisers who treat them separately may be leaving clients poorly prepared for one of life’s most demanding transitions. Lee Quinn, a chartered financial planner at Titan Wealth, argues that financial security is a necessary but insufficient condition for a successful retirement, and that the industry must widen its lens accordingly. The case Quinn makes is straightforward: after decades of accumulation, clients must switch into decumulation and begin spending the wealth they have spent a working lifetime building. That reversal is not merely mechanical. It requires a different relationship…

Beagle Street, the protection provider that is part of OneFamily, has appointed Amanda Moore and Zoe Mears to its distribution team as it looks to build scale in the intermediary market following its June 2026 launch of an entry-level critical illness and life proposition. The two hires sit at the heart of what the firm describes as a broader commitment to deepening adviser relationships and evolving its Beagle Street intermediary distribution capability. What the appointments bring to the distribution team Moore joins as strategic account manager, where her remit covers Beagle Street’s strategic intermediary partnerships and identifying new distribution channels.…

Over-75s pension withdrawals driven by inheritance tax concerns rose sharply in the latest year for which data is available, with people aged 75 and over withdrawing £1.4bn in lump sums from private pensions, according to Lubbock Fine Wealth Management. That figure represents a 35% increase from £1bn in the prior year, and the number of individuals making such withdrawals rose 27%, from 65,900 to 83,800.Lubbock Fine said the increase may partly reflect changes to the inheritance tax treatment of pensions announced by the Government in the October 2024 Autumn Budget. For portfolio holders managing retirement income, the behavioural shift is…

The IHT threshold frozen until 2031 is no longer a temporary inconvenience: it is a structural feature of the UK tax landscape, and for unmarried couples with meaningful assets it is forcing a deeply personal question about whether financial necessity should drive them to the altar. The debate has been given fresh energy by Ricky Gervais, who was quoted in the national press saying he was ‘going to have to get married’ to his long-term partner Jane Fallon to avoid a hefty inheritance tax bill.Gervais and Fallon have been together since 1982. In a recent interview, Gervais, estimated to have…

The iPipeline Origo acquisition was completed on 1 September, following clearance from the Mortgage Soup-confirmed Competition and Markets Authority approval, making it the most consequential fintech consolidation in UK wealth technology this week. For advisers and portfolio managers who rely on transfer services and connectivity infrastructure, the question is straightforward: does a larger, more integrated platform reduce operational risk, or simply concentrate it? What the iPipeline Origo Acquisition Means for Advisers By absorbing Origo’s Unipass identity service and its transfer connectivity infrastructure, iPipeline now spans both protection and wealth platforms in a way that few technology providers do. Money Marketing…

The £70m pension fraud for which three men were jailed this week serves as a sobering reminder that the greatest threat to retirement savings is rarely market volatility. Matthew Pickard, 56, Stephen Greenaway, 47, and Paul Laver, 47, were sentenced to a combined 15 years and nine months after running a seven-year investment fraud that stripped more than 3,000 people, many of them pensioners, of their savings.Pickard received the longest sentence at six years. Greenaway was sentenced to five years and three months, and Laver to four years and six months.How the £70m Pension Fraud UnfoldedThe scale of personal enrichment…

The AI threat to financial advisers is not, as Lee Coates argues, a question of whether machines will eventually process information more efficiently than humans. It is a question of what happens to professional value when they already do.Coates, a director at In Accord and the Accord Initiative, makes a case that cuts closer to the bone of financial planning than most technology commentary: knowledge, he says, is becoming a commodity. Understanding is not.When Knowledge Stops Being a DifferentiatorClients can already ask any number of AI systems to explain diversification, sequencing risk, or pension drawdown mechanics. As the technology improves,…

The Vitality AI platform investment of £13.78m sits at the heart of a set of results that show Vitality UK moving decisively into data-driven underwriting, with VitalityHealth reporting a 65% increase in operating profit for the year ended 30 June 2026 and VitalityLife posting growth of 27%. For investors assessing the insurer’s long-term durability, the question is less about this year’s margin and more about whether a behavioural-science model, augmented by artificial intelligence, can sustain those gains across a full economic cycle.Strong premium growth across health and life divisionsVitalityHealth earned premiums of £909m for the year, up 12%, with an…