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NEWS & SPECIAL OFFERS HSBC fined £10 million pounds for mis-selling investment
policies to fund care. Retirement
Education Services have been just as shocked as other organisations at the
revelations on TV and in the newspapers (Daily Mail 6/12/11) concerning the
inappropriate products offered to the elderly to fund care home fees. RES MD,
Tony Wheeler, commented that we have used NHFA for many years with regard to
advice concerning the rules and regulations on care fees in Nursing Homes
both Local Authority and commercially run.
Their literature was always of a high standard and comprehensive in
its coverage. We were
nervous when HSBC took them over in 2005 and since that time have cautioned
those who attended our courses that they had become owned by a High Street
bank which may exert more pressure on their advisers so far as financial
products for care was concerned. How
right we were. Our
policy of never accepting payment directly or by commissions for any
organisation that we work with (or suggest to participants) has been fully
endorsed by this dreadful affair. We have
already reviewed the assistance that we received from them in our
self-teaching packages and will decide shortly which organisation we can
trust to work with us going forward. We are
anxious at present to ensure that the information we give continues to be
without bias towards the sale of investment products. Unfortunately
even the present site recommended by the Government has admitted on its
website to receiving fees for business placed with experts that help them,
e.g Solicitors and IFA’s. DEFAULT
RETIREMENT AGE
The abolition of the default retirement age committed to by the coalition could have a
catastrophic impact on retirement training & planning course providers
says Tony Wheeler MD of Retirement Education Services Ltd. Up to now HR or Pension Managers have been able to
gauge based on age criteria how many staff would need to be budgeted for with
a retirement training course year on year.
These HR personnel might normally offer attendance to retirees say two
or three years before their retirement age of 65. Going forward employees will be able to decide their
own retirement age simply giving their line manager or HR Depts their
contractual notice period. This in
most cases would be only 4 weeks or a calendar month. To provide a pre-retirement training course within
four weeks of a person announcing they are going to retire would be virtually
impossible on an in-house basis and may require staff to be placed solely on
‘open’ courses by commercial providers such as ourselves given that we have
the space to take them. In the present recession it is most unlikely that
larger Employers would wish to increase their spend on retirement planning
which would be inevitable compared to the savings in-house events offer. Even if a course could be engineered within four
weeks there is little time for that employee’s partner to seek to be released
by their employer with so little notice given. However, far worse is that the benefit of attending
immediately prior to retiring turns the process into retirement ‘panic’ not
retirement planning. Long serving employees
need and deserve to have a good time to consider the many aspects that will
be raised by retirement course providers. Examples of this would be to learn the pros and cons
of deferring a state pension or paying additional voluntary
contributions. Other situations could
concern whether a divorced woman in her late fifties might be financially
penalized if she were to re-marry before state pension age. It will be hugely frustrating for employees retiring
after state pension age to learn that their savings or state pensions could
have been greater had they taken various actions several years prior to
retirement day. Their tax position could also be jeopardized if they
take a state pension when continuing to work.
They could fall foul of the age allowance trap. 2011 marks our Silver Anniversary of providing retirement training for individuals and employers alike.
Our objective is to make it a year to remember for those clients who have
helped us grow and to new clients wishing to sample our services. 28th &
29th September 2010 - Employee Benefits Show in Open Course dates and venues 2011/2012 If you are interested in attending an open
course, or sending an employee on one, please contact us even if the dates
and venues below do not suit.
1/1/2010 Interesting Year ahead for
Retirement Planning "We are in for an
interesting year" said Managing Director Tony Wheeler when interviewed
recently regarding retirement planning issues. Countless women who retired
before April 5th this year without full state pensions are likely to vent
their anger at the Government when they learn that those reaching state
pension age after 6th April may receive far more generous pensions. For example a woman reaching
state pension age on 4th April 2010 with a 20 year national insurance record
will receive a pension in today’s terms of about £49 per week. A woman whose
state pension age fall two days later on 6th April would receive £63.50 per
week for the same 20 years national insurance record. If they both live to be
80, then £15,080 more will have been won or lost for the sake of having been
born perhaps premature or later than due!! By 90 the figure rises to £22,620. These figures ignore the
state pension increasing each year which would exaggerate the imbalance
substantially more." 1/10/09 HMS Belfast hosts Talking
Retirement Online launch Leading providers of
pre retirement training, Oxfordshire-based Retirement Education Services Ltd.
recently caught the attention of a number of well-known major employers at
the launch of their web-based self-teaching programme “Talking Retirement
Online”, an online retirement training programme.
Being internet-based,
“Talking Retirement Online” can be made available to a company’s entire
workforce through purchase of an inexpensive, annual user license, offering
huge cost savings when compared with traditional face-to-face, printed or
pre-recorded training. Employees are free to learn at their own pace and to
re-visit subjects as often as necessary. There is the additional advantage
that course material can be updated rapidly in the light of changes to
legislation and benefit structures, so that users always have access to the
latest facts. |
