Month: October 2013

As water companies are obliged to provide a product to their customer that is healthy and good for them, so too should banks and building societies, argues The Fairbanking Foundation, created with a stated goal of ensuring that banks are acting in the ‘common good’.

Inheritance Tax is due in the UK when a person’s estate – their property and possessions – is worth more than £325,000 when they die. This figure is called the ‘Inheritance Tax Threshold’. The rate of Inheritance Tax due is 40% on anything above the threshold, however the rate may be reduced to 36% if...

Following publication of the Office of National Statistics (ONS) latest ‘Pension Trends: Private Pensions 2013′ publication, which reported that the number of active members of occupational pension schemes has reached its lowest level since the 1950s, Scottish Widows is warning that the UK is heading for a ‘perfect storm’ of rising expectations for retirement.

The longer we live the more likely we are to need long–term care later in life – and most of us are now likely to live longer than we would have in the past. While many of us have watched the older generation grow old and need long-term care, the inevitability of ageing is generally...

Just when it was all going so well… By and large, the news coming out of world financial centres in September was good. In the UK, Jaguar was planning to create 1,700 more jobs and the OECD were revising their growth forecasts upwards. Shares in the US ‘roared to record levels’ as the Federal Reserve...

It’s been easy to look at the news headlines over the past two or three years and assume that the economy has been a universal picture of doom and gloom. However, that’s not necessarily the case – many businesses have continued to do well and many people have prospered.