Annuity trading reforms dropped The Government announced yesterday that it was abandoning plans to allow annuity holders to trade in their annuities for cash. Annuity trading and the removal of the need to buy an annuity with a pension fund were the two pillars of pension reform of the Coalition and previous Conservative governments. Now one of these pillars have been withdrawn. The Government argues...
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Fintech: a disruptive or adaptive technology? Fintech is considered as a new technology which can disrupt the traditional finance industry, especially the consumer sector – see details of our Robo-Finance Agents Report . But how disruptive will it actually be? The past seven days has seen three key pieces of news on the Fintech sector, which could provide pointers to how the sector will develop...
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Revenues down by 2.5% in 2016 The turnover of UK accountancy and allied services companies fell by over 10% in July 2016 compared with July 2015. This means that over the first seven months of 2016, the revenues of UK accountancy firms was 2.5% lower than over the same period of 2015. Despite surveys showing the services sector of the economy is performing relatively well...
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Provisional international tourism figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS ) for July 2016 indicate that Brexit and its impact on the strength of the pound has, as yet, had little effect on international tourism flow trends. In July 2016, UK residents made 7.0 million visits abroad. This was an increase of 3% compared with July 2015. Correspondingly, overseas residents made 3.8 million visits...
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The rise of the Cyborg professional If the future is anything, the future is “Robo”: Robo-advisors, Robo-investing, Robo-medicine, Robo-insurance, Robo-driving, even Robo-market research (God forbid!). Computer systems, based on artificial intelligence software, could replace many professional services jobs in the same way that industrial machines replaced manual jobs in the industrial revolution. IRN Research argue in the Brave New Robo World, if you want to...
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Data from the ONS shows that human capital – i.e. the knowledge, skills, competencies and attributes of UK residents – represents one-third of the total wealth of the UK economy in 2015. Wealth is defined as financial assets, real assets (eg houses, building and machinery) and human capital combined. The UK economy had a total net worth of £29.6 trillion (assets less financial liabilities) with...
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The turnover of accountancy and allied services companies in the UK declined by 7% in June 2016, compared with June 2015. In the first six months of 2016, turnover was 1% lower than over the same period of 2015.
In the 1960s the young never had it so good, so they say, but in the 1990s and 2000s (especially the latter) it seems it’s the old who now enjoy the relative good life. Latest nowcasting data from the ONS, which provides initial estimates of household income indicators, show that the median household disposable income was £26,400 in 2015/16, which in constant price terms, is...
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It is now almost five years since the introduction of the Legal Services Act 2007 (LSA) in October 2011 but the expected dramatic decline in law firm numbers post-LSA has not really materialised. Some forecasts were suggesting that thousands of law firms could disappear but the reality has been much less dramatic. In May 2016 there were 10,429 law firms in England and Wales and...
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Domestic Ferries In the first six months of 2016 there were 7.115 million passengers on domestic ferry routes. This was an increase of 3.7% over the same period in 2015. However, the growth was not across the board. It was the total of the Scottish routes counted excluding Northlink that were primarily responsible for the increase. The Isle of Man and Channel Island sectors contracted while the Isle of...
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