At last weeks AMPS open meeting at the IOD, we were treated to a number of excellent sessions on AMPS activities, from lobbying the government on tax relief to clarifying the regulators position on disclosure.
Posts Tagged ‘AMPS’
Treating Customers Fairly and the FSA
Saturday, May 24th, 2008
At a recent AMPS conference Tony Moore from Axa spoke on TCF. He said:
Customer satisfaction measures are not enough – customer could be satisfied but still treated unfairly. A very good point I think, and ewasy to see how such a scenario could come about.
In simple language, Tony goes ont to say on TCF:
We treat customer dairly
We make the right productrs for our customers
We provide clear information
We give suitable advice
We keep our promises
We look after our customers
The above for a nice list of values for any industry and any busienss. I commend them.
Poor old HMRC – grab your relief and move onto the next
Monday, January 7th, 2008
At a recent meeting between AMPS and HMRC, there was concern expressed by
HMRC that the 50% borrowing rules may be being circumvented. In particular they
described a process where, for example, a £100,000 sum within a SIPP secures
£50,000 borrowing. The original £100,000 is then transferred to another SIPP leaving
behind the original borrowing and a further £50,000 borrowing is taken, and so on.
The AMPS committee is not aware of any such practice occurring but have agreed to
pass on the following words of caution from HMRC:
“Should HMRC see arrangements being put in place to attempt to circumvent the
rules on scheme borrowing we will look very closely at these and are prepared to
apply tax charges and be diligent in considering a wide range of arguments against
them. Any such arguments would be based on the facts and circumstances of each
individual case and it would therefore be difficult to provide any blanket assurances
in this area.
The Government has made clear that, in proposing the generous and flexible new
regime, they will not countenance use of the pension tax reliefs towards purposes
other than the one for which they were intended. Ministers would take very careful
note of schemes which seek to divert the purpose of the new regime.”
Machiavellian ASP – surely not – Alternatively Secured Pension
Friday, October 26th, 2007
Reading in the recent AMPS – Association of Member Directed Pensions newsletter a fascinating angle on the Alternatively Secured Pension – ASP saga.
John Bradley, outgoing chairman states that the government created the current ASP regime, knowing that the industry would kick back at the restrictions. Effectively the government created a regime so that they could accuse the industry of abusing the ASP rules, and that the adverse publicity surrounding this would be used to going back to justify compulsory annuities.
SIPP is dead long live ABATIC
Thursday, August 9th, 2007
Another topic of discussion at the recent Henry Stewert Conference was the use of SIPP as a term for pensions that are member directed. Clearly when AMPS was founded the phrase SIPP was not considered even though the SIPP Provider Group Association was half of the association with Pensioneer Trustees (APT) . Quite right too, the growth of the Pseudo SIPP market is creating confusion for consumers. Perhaps ABATIC would be better, A Better Acronym To Inform Consumers !
