Change, cookery and music

It’s been a week of change, cookery and music here at Informed Choice.

On Monday we welcomed Amanda as a new member of our administration team.

Amanda joins us following a career in retail and buying administration. She’s enthusiastic about learning the ropes of financial planning administration and has settled in quickly, getting to grips with our unique sense of humour.

Yesterday we bid farewell to Kelvin in our Paraplanning team.

Kelvin has been with Informed Choice for the past year and has left us to join a firm (much) closer to home.

As Financial Planners who extol the importance of a work/life balance and living the best possible life, we really can’t blame him for wanting to save 40 hours each month of commuting!

We are actively recruiting to replace his role in the Paraplanner team at the moment, speaking to several promising candidates.

Another change this week was an update to our strategic asset models, which I’ve written about here.

Our team keeps these things under regular review and considers detailed analysis from a third-party investment committee who do all of the number crunching on our behalf.

Last Saturday saw us celebrate the Cranleigh Food & Music Festival 2017, which is always a brilliant event here in the village.

We were out in force supporting the event; Nick took part in a cookery demonstration with local farm shop Ruby & Kind, Emma was singing outside the office and then we sponsored the excellent evening performance by South Coast Soul Revue.

The event raises money for Cranleigh Arts Centre, a local charity and venue we are always very pleased to support.

In the news this week, all eyes were on Monarch which went bust on Monday morning, leaving 110,000 passengers in need of repatriation and resulting in the cancellation of 300,000 flight bookings, including Victoria’s planned trip to Barcelona later this month!

At the Conservative party conference, Theresa May battled through a farcical conference speech, managing to share plans to cap energy prices as soon as this winter and provide an extra £10bn of funding for first-time buyers under the Help to Buy Scheme.

Expectations of an interest rate rise next month have grown further, with Bank of England governor Mark Carney saying he believes interest rates could rise in the “relatively near term”. This has implications for investment portfolios, especially bond holdings, which we are reflecting in the changes to our strategic asset allocations mentioned above.

We hope you’ve had a productive week and enjoy the weekend ahead.

Are there any personal finance or investing topics on your mind you would like to chat about? Just let us know.