Exam passes, blooming awards & cartoon capers

Something we take real pride in here at Informed Choice is upholding the highest professional standards.

After recently celebrating his second anniversary with us, Andy Bodman in our Paraplanning team took another step closer to obtaining the CII Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning this week, passing his penultimate exam module.

Our financial planning director Shelley McCarthy was celebrating an exam pass a day earlier, after passing the CII Equity Release exam.

Blooming awards

One of our main areas of community involvement is supporting the activities of Cranleigh in Bloom.

I’ve served as the Chairman of Cranleigh in Bloom for the past two years and Andrea has been a committee member for three years.

On Tuesday afternoon, we hosted the Cranleigh in Bloom prize giving tea party at Notcutts Garden Centre.

I always get a little nervous before public speaking, but delivering my Chairman’s report to the assembled room of 40 volunteers and supporters seemed to go smoothly.

Our own hanging basket outside Sundial House continues to look great, soon to be replaced with a new display for the autumn and winter.

Cartoon capers

Within the financial planning profession, one of the highest accolades is being featured in Money Marketing magazine’s Out of Context section.

It’s an honour bestowed on Nick several times during his 40+ year long career, but only my second time this week, with a cartoon poking fun at comments I recently made on Twitter after splitting two huge oak trees into firewood.

Sharing best practice

Among the client and professional adviser meetings we have held this week, we also took time out as a team to hold our quarterly best practice meeting.

This is an opportunity for our Financial Planners and Paraplanners to spend the afternoon together, discussing technical updates and processes, to stay up to date and improve our collective skills.

Inflation, interest rates & Bitcoin

In the news this week, we’ve seen rising inflation and then interest rates kept on hold. The Bank of England seems to be moving closer to a rate rise, possibly as early as November if the financial markets can be trusted.

Our regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, has referred the investment consultancy sector to the Competition and Markets Authority, as part of their wider work of the asset management sector.

The term ‘investment consultant’ does not cover the type of advice we give here at Informed Choice, but instead those large firms (three are believed to have as much as an 80% market share!) who advise pension funds on their strategies.

The FCA was also in the headlines this week warning investors about the dangers of Initial Coin Offerings. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency is the latest investing fad but extremely high risk and currently displaying bubble-like characteristics, making any exposure to digital currencies a very bad idea for retail investors.

A date was announced for the Budget, a day which always gives us plenty to digest and talk about.

We also saw a couple of significant tenth anniversaries this week; ten years since contactless payments were introduced in the UK (which is discussed in our latest new podcast episode today) and ten years since the Treasury agreed to bail-out Northern Rock, prompting the first run on a British bank since 1866.