2013 was quite a year in investment terms – many clients will have portfolios in need of some serious spring cleaning in 2014. We have put together a 7 step action plan for 2014 – part one is below. Stay tuned for more over the next week or two.<\/p>\n
The old saying goes, \u201cdon\u2019t put all your eggs\u00a0in one basket\u201d and it\u00a0has long been the case that when considering\u00a0an investment portfolio, diversification across different asset classes is of the upmost importance in order to manage risk and return. <\/span><\/p>\n While diversification across asset classes is as important now as it always has been, given the increasing speed\u00a0<\/span>of change in both the political and regulatory environment, it makes sense to diversify across product types as well.<\/p>\n For example, pension plans offer highly generous tax reliefs to investors as well as tax efficient fund growth, however they also have restrictions in terms of the amount that you can save\u00a0<\/span>and the age at which you can gain access to the funds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Pensions are especially prone to legislative change and recently\u00a0seem to have become a politically easy target for the government to extract further taxation from more wealthy savers. As such, while a pension plan will form the bedrock of most retirement plans, it makes sense to include some other \u201cproduct types\u201d to lessen the impact of an adverse change in pension planning rules. An increase in the minimum pension age (from 55 to 60) for example would throw many retirement plans off course. Holding a suitable range of other \u201cproduct wrappers\u201d such as ISA\u2019s and investment bonds will mitigate this risk. <\/span><\/p>\n The tax treatment of\u00a0<\/span>product types is also prone to change. There has been talk in the media of government plans to\u00a0reduce the level of tax relief available or further limit the total allowable lifetime savings within a pension plan. Conversely, there is pressure to\u00a0increase the amount of tax-advantaged savings allowed in an ISA each year to encourage the public to save and invest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Given that the time horizon for some investments is\u00a030 years or more, it seems almost inevitable that some form of taxation\u00a0<\/span>or legislative change will impact on the plan before it completes. It is vital to review your plans on a regular basis to ensure that they remain suitable for your circumstances over time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2013 was quite a year in investment terms – many clients will have portfolios in need of some serious spring cleaning in 2014. We have put together a 7 step action plan for 2014 – part one is below. Stay tuned for more over the next week or two. The old saying goes, \u201cdon\u2019t put… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-investments","category-pensions","category-review","wp-sticky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buckinghamgate.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buckinghamgate.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buckinghamgate.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buckinghamgate.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buckinghamgate.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.buckinghamgate.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buckinghamgate.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buckinghamgate.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buckinghamgate.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}