Welcome to our final edition of IFA Magazine for 2024 – a cracker of a double issue covering December and January.
As we reflect on another busy year for the advice profession, yet again advisers have proved their resilience. Despite numerous challenges, you’ve managed to deliver excellence in client service as well as creating strong and successful businesses to boot. No easy task!
Front and centre has been to bed-in the FCA’s Consumer Duty requirements. To your credit, advisers seem largely to have done so with your usual ‘can do’ attitude and focus on ‘putting clients’ needs first’. Take a bow everyone – we think you deserve it. It’s meant a period of mammoth regulatory change and hard work, one which will hopefully boost consumer confidence as well as the take up of much-needed professional advice for the future.
Aside from the ongoing regulatory challenges, all the uncertainty from the dozens of elections, geo-political events, wars, a challenging global economic environment as well as the usual market ups and downs, still hasn’t knocked the stuffing out of this dynamic profession of ours.
One thing’s for sure, working to support clients with robust financial plans and appropriate investment portfolios to help them achieve their all-important goals in life is never dull. It’s a challenge that continues to keep all of us – including journalists like us who are simply trying to do our bit to keep you informed and up to date – on our toes.
Merry and bright
For the team and I here at IFA Magazine, we’re really looking forward to 2025. We’re already getting our jingle on to make sure we do our utmost to keep bringing you relevant insight, information and analysis.
Our focus is always on content that we hope will not only be informative but also help you to think about what you do and how you do it. And that’s not just for now and the festive season but for the whole year ahead.
New opportunities
On page 5, we continue our series talking to experts at PIMCO about where markets are heading in the coming months. This time, we’re grateful to two excellent PIMCO economists for sharing their economic outlook and investment strategies for the Euro area with us.
There’s something a bit different on page 8, where we talk to Family Building Society’s Sam Morrison, about how they’re standing out from the crowd with their range of innovative, flexible mortgage and savings products – and great service too.
But there are lots more treats on our festive menu for you to digest – with or without a mince pie! Across the following pages, we delve into details of THAT big budget, the impacts of Trump 2.0 in the US, AI, investment strategies, market outlooks, paraplanning and direct authorisation v networks – as well as some stocking fillers from our popular Mortgage & Property section.
Festive greetings to you all
Whatever your plans for the ho-ho-holiday season, when it finally arrives of course, myself and the team here wish you and your nearest and dearest a relaxing and joyful time.
It remains for us to say a big, huge thank you to you, our wonderful readers, as well as all those experts who so willingly give us their time and insight to support our content. We really do appreciate it. Here’s to 2025!
Sue Whitbread
Editor, IFA Magazine
