The minister for finance has extended ARF options to all Buy-Out Bond holders, opening the door for better retirement planning. In this article Pat Ryan, Head of Retirement Solutions, examines the implications for advisers of the extension of the Approved Retirement Fund (ARF) options to all buy-out bond holders.
The outperformance of small and mid-cap (SMID) stocks relative to their large-cap peers is a much debated anomaly but the evidence is clear over the long term. SMID stocks have outperformed large caps by an impressive by 114% since 2000.
Since he promised to do “whatever it takes” to save the Eurozone in 2012, nobody could accuse ECB President Mario Draghi of lacking endeavour. The same could also be said of the other main central banks who have pushed the boundaries of unconventional policy further than most had ever expected. But, have they gone too far with their latest innovation – a Negative Interest Rate Policy (NIRP)?
The new Companies Act introduced in 2015 makes it easier and less cumbersome for business owners to run their business through a limited or unlimited company structure. One of the major and sometimes overlooked benefits of running your business via a company is the ability to convert significant pre-tax trading profits into personally owned retirement assets through company contributions rather than personal pension contributions.
The recently published Finance Bill contains a number of interesting developments, in particular in the area of postretirement planning.
Global mergers and acquisitions (‘M&A’) activity looks set to accelerate in 2014 and mid-cap equities are best placed to benefit.
Pension changes for 2014 as outlined in yesterday’s Budget speech suggest that the new pensions taxation regime is now settling down after a period of much uncertainty since the concept of a capped pension fund threshold was first introduced in December 2005.