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Britain is going through one of its occasional schrizophrenic moments – or at least politicians from all major political parties are continuing to sit on the fence when it comes to improved state pensions or better occupation provisions.
For some reason, the thought of pensions seems to bring out the worst in our political leaders; they talk the talk but suddenly become crippled when it comes to walking the walk.
The facts are clear: Britain is going through a frightening savings crisis and this, apart from everything else, will impact seriously on provisions for our retirement.
Yet for reasons best known to itself, the government is continuing on a suicidal short-termist course of taxing pensions until the pips squeak then keeping its collective fingers crossed and hoping for the best when this generation of babyboomers reaches retirement. In the meantime, the Tories are playing three monkeys: cannot see what the problem is; cannot hear the cries of concern; and are struck dumb when it comes to saying where they stand.
The reality is something has to give. Either it changes course, and the personal account (Nest) looks as if it is heading the same way as stakeholder pensions, or we are going to face a tsunami of pensioner poverty in the next 20 or so years.
It is time to get politicians to commit now to the long-term future of pensions before one of the most important general elections since the Second World War takes place, that has led to Financial Adviser mounting a campaign to Save Our Pensions.
Now is the right time for all those concerned about the future of pensions to connect with their constituency candidates and quiz them robustly on their views on the state of pensions generally and how, as members of parliament, they would vote on any future bills.
No prevarication; no humming and hawing, but a clear and unequivocal yes or no to providing a better state pension system and stronger support for occupational pensions.
If you support this campaign, email me at: hal.austin@ft.com

Virgin Money charging its current account customers a fee to ensure its costs are more transparent is good news for customers.

The bank, which is expected to open two branches by the end of the year in London and Edinburgh, will charge a “small” monthly fee for using its current account service.
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Before the financial crisis, it was very rare for Iceland to be in the psyche of the British public. Aside from the Eurovision Song Contest and purchasing a cheap Black Forest gateau, the country and its supermarket namesake barely raised an eyebrow on these shores.

However, this weekend the eyes of the British government, and its Dutch counterparts will be on Icelandic voters as they decide in a public referendum whether to approve plans for the country to repay compensation given to savers in the failed Icesave bank.
Iceland’s parliament had agreed to pay the British and Dutch governments £2.3bn and €1.2bn (£1bn) compensation respectively for the support provided to 300,000 savers when the online bank, part of the nationalised Landsbanki, collapsed in October 2008.
But Icelandic president Olafur Ragnar Grimmson rejected the legislation amid mounting domestic opposition, prompting a national referendum on the issue.
Negotiations between the countries over the rates on the repayment have also since collapsed.
So this begs the question, why bother? Savers now have their money back and the British and Dutch governments surely accounted for these costs when they decided to repay people for losses at a bank which was not even under their own jurisdiction.
The only people who really stand to lose out are the Icelandic public.
British savers need to put themselves in the Icelandic voters’ shoes. In the midst of a global recession, would we want to be stifled with the debt of another country, on top of our own? While we are all anticipating tax rises, wouldn’t we prefer for them to go towards alleviating our own fiscal issues, rather than those of another country.
The lesson to be learned here by savers, governments and shoppers alike is that while a deal may look attractive, ultimately you cannot always have your cake and eat it.

When I first accepted a job as a financial journalist in September 2006, I wondered what on earth I had signed up for.

After spending the first eight hours as a features writer at Financial Adviser struggling to write a product review on a two-year fixed rate mortgage – trying to decipher LTV, ERC, APR, M-day and FSA, among other things – I thought to myself there had to be more to the financial services industry than this.

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The only section of the City regulator’s mammoth workforce that is giving value for money is the enforcement division.
But, increasingly it is beginning to look as if Margaret Cole and her team are on an evangelising mission to ‘clean up’ the waste in the mortgage advice sector.
And, like all evangelising missions, it now appears as if natural rights are being thrown out the window and the good, bad and basically incompetent are being swept along in this tsunami of moralising regulation.
Recently, a number of people have been banned for gross incompetence, lack of integrity and what can only be called making basic, but costly, mistakes.
In any regulatory climate and by any measure, all these offences are not the same.
It is not comparing like with like: an adviser who makes a fraudulent mortgage application is not the same as someone who keeps bad records, just as a person lacking in integrity cannot be allowed to continue in the sector.
But ‘integrity’ must be given a strict regulatory definition and not be thrown about like falling leaves in the autumn.
Equally, to threaten incompetence, however it is measured, as an offence worthy of a life ban is perverse.
An incompetent adviser can be trained and a conditional ban would be an appropriate punishment for such an offence.
We also need to drill down more closely how this over-exuberance can lead to denying people their human rights.
If, for example, an appointed representative makes bogus mortgage submissions to a directly authorised adviser and they are allowed through, of course the adviser should be punished.
But to suggest he should be barred for life from the industry is, in the real world, disproportionate.
Of course, the adviser should have checked the application thoroughly, but incompetence is not a crime.
Even if he had been sentenced to imprisonment for the criminal offence of fraud the term would hardly go beyond six months.
Sorting out the wheat from the chaff is one thing, denying people their livelihood because of incompetence is another.
Then there is the little matter of the shared backgrounds of a large number of the victims of this moral campaign.
I am sure that it is mere coincidence that these people are picked on, even if they are wrongdoers, but how they come to the attention of the authorities is the interesting question.
Good enforcement is necessary in a sector notorious for its greed, but objectivity and fairness should be the watchwords.

Just as Gordon Brown staggers on in his premiership, the financial services sector looks like it could face another blow.
He is saying that there may be a gobally co-ordinated tax, following president Obama’s move to attack the banks last month.
The idea seems to have been agreed in principle, it’s more a question of how it should be implemented.
Putting aside the politics of the move – the fact that Mr Brown seems to perform better on the world stage than at home, and the imposition in the UK of a tax on bonuses – the plan is to be welcomed and perhaps lends support to fiercer regulation of the financial sector.
Many may have thought that President Obama’s plan to get the banks to shed hedge fund and proprietary trading could have been, in part, a way of showing that he’s tough, after the Democrats lost the Massachussetts Senate seat. Now he seems to be getting worldwide support, and the drift away from regulation that seemed to be taking place is coming back. How much further the politicians will go, and how far-reaching these consequences may turn out to be factors under close scrutiny for some time to come.

The fallout of the credit crunch has created a potential flurry of new banks on the high street and the supermarket checkout.

Greed got the better for most banks who for many years took advantage of the massive cost income ratios available to them and now the new kids on the banking block are taking advantage.

It appears that the government is turning its back on the established part of the banking sector, which it courted for years, with Lord Myners of Truro, financial services secretary to the Treasury, courting a number of new kid banks to establish a high street presence.

The credit crunch and the multi-billion government bail out means that Northern Rock, the taxpayer owned bits of Bradford & Bingley and the forced sale of Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland businesses means that there are plenty of opportunities for the new kids.

It is believed that there has not been a new major high street bank in the UK for around 100 years and it seems there are plenty of new kids who want to take advantage of the massive profits available in the sector.

Virgin recently got its banking license buying little known Church House. Metro Bank is waiting for its licence from the FSA and Walton & Co, a bank launched by Sandy Chen, former analyst at Panmure Gordon, has been tapping investors for funds.

Non traditional financial services companies like Tesco, Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer have all been rumoured they may go into retail banking.

Liz Hartley, consultant for Datamonitor’s Financial Services team, said that the new banks will bring a more dynamic aspect to financial services.

She said that Tesco Bank will take a 1.5 per cent share of the current account market as soon as 2013.

While Metro Bank will win 0.5 per cent market share in the UK current account market by 2015.

Clearly the banking sector is set for more changes to come.

Tax doesn’t have to be taxing, but the taxman can be

Corresponding with HM Revenue and Customs is never the most exciting of experiences, no matter what Adam Hart-Davis or Moira Stuart may tell you on the adverts. So when the infamous pale-brown envelope landed on my doorstep this week, my expectations were low.

That was until I opened it to be told “according to our records you are in between jobs.” Which is funny because I am typing this blog from a computer at the Financial Adviser newsdesk with a payslip glimmering at me full of income tax and national insurance deductions being paid straight to that same taxman’s pockets.

It turns out I am not alone. Thousands, possibly millions of people have been sent the wrong tax codes ahead of the April 2010-2011 tax year in what HMRC blames on its new computer system. Is this the same system it wants everyone to use to file online from next year?

HMRC has apologised for the error and insists there is plenty of time to sort this out. Which can only be a good thing as it took me three days of listening to classical music to finally speak to someone.

Monday: Nice recorded voice lady tells me to call back about tax codes after 31 January.

Tuesday: Nice recorded voice lady tells me all advisers are busy and hangs up.

Wednesday: Spend 7 minutes on hold, on an 0845 line, until I speak to a nice man who rectifies the situation and tells me I had been registered in secondary employment.

While it was relatively easy to sort out and I will soon receive a shiny new and correct tax code, surely it shouldn’t have been up to me to phone a premium number to resolve.

I’m sure the taxman would have been calling if I had decided to go with the code and stay in “in-between jobs” to benefit from a lower tax rate.

Have you been affected too?

The news on Wednesday (20 January) that Standard Life Assurance was handed a massive £2.45m fine by the FSA for serious failings in its marketing material for its Pension Sterling fund, may be the signal of more to come for the providers and lenders alike.

Since the City watchdog announced its intention to sharpen its claws and clamp down on the industry a year ago, the majority of fines handed out by the regulator have been to advisers.

But is this set to change?

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New figures out today suggest that the housing market is definitely taking an upward turn – at least for now.
Data from Connells Survey and Valuation show that on the valuation front, activity has been increasing rather dramatically.
In December, for example, there were 52 per cent more valuations than in the same month in 2008.
Clearly, homeowners are gearing themselves up for another bout of getting into the housing market. Interest rates are at historic lows, the mortgage market has been thawing, and perhaps people are beginning to see that life might be returning to what was a bouyant sector.
The danger is that, like the investment bankers, the retail bankers forget the trauma of the last two years. While a notable few probably need no reminder that they are part-owned by the State, there are numerous others who may be desperate to get some business coming back. LTVs are still low, and some have been calling for the return of the 95 per cent mortgage. But for everyone in the mortgage business, lessons should be learnt from the recent past – the dangers as well as the rewards of a bouyant market.

Almary Green Investments has written to its clients warning them of accessing their pension funds prematurely, following the change in the retirement age from 50 to 55.

At a time of high unemployment the temptation for many people over the age of 55 to dip in to the tax free lump sum of their occupational pensions is huge.

And, predictably, there are some dubious and predatory financial advisers out there who willingly ‘advise’ their clients to activate their pensions only to get the £700 or they charge for the exchange of a couple letters to their clients and one to the clients’ former employers.

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The debate about the professionalisation of the independent financial adviser occupational group has given rise to a small, but important, side issue.
In a recent high court decision, it was concluded that professional advice from accountants carry legal privilege.
Following an earlier House of Lords decision, the high court nevertheless decided that the legal advice privilege given to accountants does not extend to advice about tax law. These technicalities will have to be resolved by lawyers.
However, since in practice accountants are the professional group closest to IFAs, then it can be assumed that professional advice from an IFA must carry the same legal privilege.
Equally important, since the future professional development of the IFA sector will take it more along the giving of tax advice, more so than investment advice/planning, this is an issue that can no longer be ignored.
It also raises issues of an IFA’s professional duties to his or her regulatory body, to the FSA (and there must be an implicit duty to the FSA), to the soon to be constituted consumer body and to the administration of justice.
In fact, this duty extends from financial advice to financial planning and can be said to encroach on the relationship between the professional adviser/planner and the financial ombudsman service.
Even if we were to accept the principle of privileged advice, where do the boundaries begin and where do they end?

Reading the devil in the detail of yesterday’s pre-Budget statement from Chancellor Alistair Darling was a further example of how the government continues to march in the opposite direction of pension’s simplification.

At a time when the need for pension’s saving is at its greatest, the government is looking to gain extra revenue from placing tighter curbs on retirement saving.

According to leading independent pensions researcher Dr Ros Altmann, now is the time when attention should be placed on cutting the budget deficit, particularly as low interest rates could further damage pensions and annuity rates.

Reading the fine print in the announcements, Ms Altmann said public sector pension costs would in fact increase even more than the government has predicted.

According to Ms Altmann Table B15 in Annex B of the PBR shows the net cost of paying public sector pensions will rise from £3.3bn in 2008/2009 to £4.2bn in 2009/2010 and £4.8bn in 2010-2011 – a 45 per cent increase.

She added that people should also not be fooled by the pretence of a promised cap on taxpayer contributions to public pensions by 2012.

Examining the detail, she found that as well as the cap only applying to longevity, if pension costs rise due to changes in interest rates or inflation, then there is in fact, no cap at all.

She added that it is highly likely that public sector pension costs will continue to overshoot Budget forecasts as they have done in the last few months.

Ms Altmann has also called for Personal Accounts to be abandoned, not delayed to allow the government to make billions in savings.

Delaying the introduction of the controversial scheme could save as much as £100m by 2012/2013, she said.

Ms Altmann added that while Mr Darling recognised the need in his statement for older people to stay economically active, highlighting measures to help those aged over 65 to work part-time, it would not work in practice unless pension credit rules and age discrimination legislation is changed.

Based on this, she said there was now a “desperate need” for an independent review of public sector pension costs.

What are your thoughts on Mr Darling’s promises? Is a review necessary?

Liz Field, the interim chief executive at the FSSC, is nothing if not bold. She took up the job, at an institution whose very existence it at best uncertain, on a six month contract, tasked with the unenviable challenge of getting it through its review to get its licence back.

It might not be on the scale of deciding where the axe should fall in the public sector, or sending more troops into a seemingly no-win environment, but as jobs in financial services go, it is a tall order.

Now it seems that even if the FSSC does get its licence back, it may still face other challenges. The – current – opposition parties have been distinctly lukewarm about the FSSC, and sector skills councils. Perhaps they are still waiting to see which way the wind blows.

Nonetheless, Ms Field does at least seem aware of the situation confronting her, and the task ahead, which is encouraging. But perhaps more should be done to remind us of why we need a skills council in the first place – just as the industry is gearing up for a dramatic change in its qualification requirements, it is an opportunity for the council to show why it is needed.

Should we be surprised that Anthony Bolton wants to make a comeback into active fund management? It’s all very well having one’s reputation intact, but when someone at the top of their game takes a back seat, perhaps two years out of the spotlight has been long enough.

He has certainly chosen what many expect to be the next big thing: China. The fund will invest in Chinese companies, wherever they are listed, and they will focus more on domestic consumption.

To tie in with the plan, Mr Bolton will move to Hong Kong, and manage the fund from there with more details being announced early next year.

True to style, it is a bold move. He achieved an annualised return of 19 per cent on his Special Situations Fund. The question is, can he do it again? It certainly looks like a similar approach to the one he took at Fidelity – look for opportunities in small companies that are springing up, in an economy that is on the up.

But his decision is a big risk. It is all very well being one of the most successful fund managers in the business, but he has his own reputation to match by coming back into the game.

This is obviously something he would be aware of, but the risk of failure is perhaps not as offputting as a long, if comfortable, retirement stretching ahead of him.

For all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the decline of self-cert, I think it is important not to lose sight of the over-riding problem.

The fact is, that some advisers encouraged their clients to go for self-cert, and exaggerate their income. This was illustrated by a BBC documentary, which found a number of advisers doing this.

From my own experience, someone I know, who was so spectacularly irresponsible with her finances she will probably carry tens of thousands of pounds of unsecured debt with her for the rest of her life, simply saw self-cert as a way for her to get a mortgage.

She did not have any conceivable sort of steady income, but had decided that she wanted a house and this option was her way of doing it.

I realise that she may not be the average person looking for a mortgage, but it is precisely this kind of activity that lay at the bottom of the chain of the credit crunch, and subsequent recession.

The problem is, a number of advisers may have become reliant on the sizeable commissions available through self-cert, and clearly their business models will have to change. But many successful self-employed people will say that it is important to have several lines of business, in case one goes down.

And for the mortgage industry, it should consider adapting, and finding another way to cater for fluctuating income levels, which I’m sure many self-employed document for themselves.

Is the primary problem with pensions politicians themselves?

If we took the politics out of pensions from the time when the Labour government came to power in 1997 we would have a system that incentivised both individuals and employers.

The system that the Labour government has created is this: individuals don’t want to save for their retirement and employers only want to offer the bare minimum.

Since 1997 we have had pensions simplification and the tide of the economic crisis means we now have pensions complication. The Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997, removed tax credit on share dividends in a move many have argued wiped billions of pounds off the value of pension funds.

There has been a new pensions minister or secretary of state at the Department for Work and Pensions every year and they can’t make the tough decisions that are needed even if they wanted to.

Pensions are a long-term product, and they need long-term solutions and taking the decision-making away from politicians who are trying to climb the greasy pole would result in more people saving and untangling the mess the pensions system currently is.

The primary problem with pensions in the UK at the moment tough action needs to be taken. Over the past 15 years a number of issues have developed that could take up to 25 years or more to resolve.

This includes: the state pension and the role of means testing, golden public sector pensions especially for well paid civil servants, increasing the state pension age because of increased longevity and constantly changing legislation.

Experts and specialists don’t have a high profile career that they need to protect in the same way, so can make very difficult and painful decisions about the future of the pensions. Politicians who want to get elected and retain their careers can’t make difficult decisions. There are millions of people employed by the public sector who don’t want their pensions threatened.

If we had an independent body that looked at pensions objectively – full of specialists with real decision-making power – and I am sure that we would not have had the whole system undermined by politicking and Members of Parliament whose future as far as pensions are concerned is secure.

The latest figures released by the Treasury on Child Trust Funds show the product has gone from strength to strength since its official launch in 2005.

According to the government, currently two thirds of parents have opened new schemes, £2bn being held in the accounts overall.

There has also been a £10 increase in the average amount paid into accounts every month.
So, while the Treasury can take heart in the relatively strong take up of CTFs, the proof certainly will be in the pudding – what will the first receivers of the trust fund do with their new found riches?

Will they pour the funds into their education, or perhaps towards a deposit on a first home, or even a life-changing experience of an overseas trip?

Or will the local waterhole down the road benefit most or perhaps lost in some “must-have” items from Topshop?

As successful as CTFS have so far been, we must remind ourselves that the products are relatively untested when it comes to the end result, and we have at least another decade to find that out.

Will CTFs change the savings attitude of the UK’s population?

Are we doomed to pass our “buy now pay later” culture on to the next generation, or will the events of the last two years have an effect on today’s children.

If the Tax Incentivised Savings Association had their way, all adults would be locking their funds away in a child trust fund-like vehicle for adults to encourage more people to save for their retirement.

Will CTFs incentivise the next generation into saving responsibly or are we to become a trust fund nation, locking our funds away as the only means of paying for our homes, or retirement?

You cannot fault Chancellor Alistair Darling’s timing: Just over a week before Halloween he has proposed to split Northern Rock, Jekyll and Hyde style, into a “good” bank and a “bad” bank.

Those familiar with Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella will recall that the good Dr Jekyll relied on a potion to transform him from the evil Hyde; as time went on the two became increasingly inextricable to the point that evil Hyde was the dominant force.

I certainly hope that Northern Rock has not passed this point of no return, but I do wonder what magic potion Mr Darling has up his sleeve to separate the good from the bad in banking.

If Mr Darling’s plan goes ahead the government will break up the bank by the end of 2009 and to begin privatising the good half in early 2010. The split would allocate around £10bn of low-risk mortgages and £19bn to £20bn of retail deposits to the good part to sell off.

Northern Rock’s remaining £55bn mortgage book and additional unsecured loans and Treasury assets would be held in a government-controlled asset company, eventually to be wound-down or sold off.

In the meantime the UK government will plough an additional £8bn into Northern Rock to fund the split. The bank will be allowed to increase its mortgage lending from its current level of £4bn to £21bn in 2011 – a significant leap, but still much lower than the bank’s pre-recession level of mortgage lending (£29bn in 2006).

The plan won approval from the European Commission, although Neelie Kroes, EU competition commissioner, wisely imposed some limits on Northern Rock’s ability to write new business as a penalty for the £27bn in state aid it has already received.

Several companies have already expressed their interest in the Dr Jekyll side of the bank, including Richard Branson’s Virgin, which recently applied for a banking licence.

Time will tell whether this split is plausible, or whether the “bad” in the bank will pass through the financial system like the monster from 1980s horror flick The Thing, which transferred from human to human undetected until it was too late.

I am off to Bucharest for Halloween this weekend, but somehow I doubt the home of Dracula will be able to dish up anything more hair-raising than Mr Darling’s proposal. Let me know what you think about the future of Northern Rock.

While I do not want to cause national grief on the scale of that seen when Robbie Williams left Take That it is with great regret that I inform the IFA community that this will be my last ever blog.

Having spent the last five years working in financial journalism I have decided on a career change.

The last two and a half years of my career have been spent at FT Business. Some of the more astute of you may have noticed that this has coincided with the greatest financial crisis in the last 60 years.

It was not my fault! Like many journalists in this field it is a sphere that I found myself in rather than it being a life long dream but any preconception that I had about this being a boring field, with boring people, quickly dissipated.

While the last two years have been exciting, sometimes very stressful, they have certainly not been boring. I feel quite privileged that I have been at the forefront of what my daughter, and hopefully one day my grandchildren, will be studying at school.

There have been many occasions where I have felt that I have been at the centre of events. I was at the extraordinary general meeting up in Newcastle when the Northern Rock board and shareholders were desperately trying to save their bank. I reported on the Treasury Select Committee when the naughty school children Mssrs Stevenson, Hornby, Goodwin and McKillop were hauled in front of the Treasury Select Committee like naughty school children.

Having attended several committee meetings in the past it was (where sometimes several members of the committee are not even in attendance) it was a shock to find it was standing room only in the public gallery. Normally bored-looking journalists have a row of seats to themselves.

I don’t want to bore you with more anecdotes but having reported on everything from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the merger of Lloyds and HBoS, to Santander extending their market share in the UK I wondered what your outstanding memories are of the last two years and are we indeed out of the woods yet?

The City Regulator has finally come round to acting on the widespread scandal that is self-cert mortgages. But, in so doing, it must be careful it does not throw out the baby with the bath water.

Financial Adviser has reported on a number of occasions the case of the West London bus driver who claimed to be on £80,000 a year, but the only question he wanted answered by a senior manager from a leading lender was what information he passed on to the tax man. Strangely, on the way back in to London, the lender suddenly became like the three monkeys – did not hear, did not see and could not recall the question.

The real danger in the FSA’s precipitous decision, taken without any consultation or discussion, is that the regulator, knowing something was wrong with the self-cert market had to be seen to be doing something and will take the easy way out and try to penalise the innocent along with the guilty.

There are two potential guilty culprits in the self-cert market. First are those borrowers who set out to inflate their incomes in order to get a loan, even if they intend in all honesty to cut back on their budgets in order to meet their repayments. These are people the regulator has to save from themselves.

The second group of culprits are the lenders who quite often re-direct legitimate would-be prime borrowers to their sub-prime arms on the most dubious of grounds for the express purpose of imposing higher repayment charges on them. These are the lenders, many of them household names, who often turn a convenient blind-eye to the discrepancies on application forms only to revive them when the borrower defaults on the loan.

It is at this point that the regulator and the Financial Ombudsman Service should intervene and prevent these rogue lenders from using their bulging wallets to bully misguided borrowers. They should be allowed to get away with bad behaviour.
The innocent victims in all this are the genuine self-employed who have not yet established a three-year or more record of accounts with which to confirm their earnings; or those who have other earnings, apart from salaries and wages, which they intend to use to fund repayments.

By all means, punish the fraudulent and greedy, including those who would sell any product to anybody as long as there is a decent bonus, but protect the innocent.
In the final analysis, taking financial advice from a professional is always the best guarantee. This must be the backdrop to the new ethical dimension to financial services post-recession.

Remutualising failed bank Northern Rock would be a mistake and it should be sold off to enable hard working taxpayers recover the costs of propping up an emblem of the failures in the banking system.

Last week the Building Societies Association in a 40-page study said that remutualisation would strengthen competition and create a more diversified financial sector.

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Everyone who arrives home tired on a Friday after a long working week will no doubt despair at looming deadline for the pension age shifting up next year.

Currently, from 6 April 2010, the minimum age at which pension benefits can be taken will jump from 50 to 55, except on the grounds of ill-health and for certain occupations.

But no surprises that this goal post may yet be moved if the Tories have anything to do with it.

According to the Daily Mail, David Cameron has plans up his sleeve to accelerate the changes if the Conservative Party forms the next government, in order to make retirement more affordable.

As it stands, the state pension age for men and women will rise to 66 in 2026, age 67 in 2036 and age 68 in 2046.

But if Mr Cameron has his way, voting cards at the ready, the skip from 65 to 68 could be accelerated, although no new timescale has been given.

But what will this shift in age mean to financial advisers?

According to Scottish Life next year’s change will create “significant” planning issues for IFAs who have clients currently between the ages of 49 and 54.

It warned this group will find they will have their access to their pensions restricted if they do not act soon.

The provider has already created what it terms as an “instant expert” support pack in preparation for the age change.

Is accelerating the rise in state pension age a good idea? And are advisers prepared to adapt to the changing needs of their clients if this happens?

After attending an adviser meeting yesterday I have a new found respect for small IFAs and the compliance challenges they face.

There is a lot of talk in the industry about the compliance burden, but it was only when I tagged along to the Berkshire IFA group yesterday that I understood the extent of the obstacles small advisers are up against.

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I have been preparing for this week since the start of the year. “What is so important to a financial journalist about this week in September that it has been weighing heavily on their mind since January?” I hear you ask.

“Is it the fact that from 7 to 13 September it is Financial Planning Week?”

As dedicated as I am to financial services I am afraid I cannot say that is the reason I have been building up to this date for the last nine months.

No, the fact is on 2 January my partner and I discovered we were going to be parents for the first time this year – and needed to get our finances sorted!

Following visits to the appropriate medical professionals 12 weeks later we discovered our “due date” was 6 September.

That date has passed and the fact I am writing this blog is proof I still have a bit more waiting to go.

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