Investment - Articles - Is reforming the ISA regime the best way forward

 “The FCA and Treasury are already working together on ‘targeted support’ as part of the Advice Guidance Boundary Review. We’ve been promised a further consultation, covering both pensions and retail investments, by the mid-year. This is likely to revisit scrapped proposals, previously labelled ‘core investment advice’, which had the objective of supporting the 4.2 million individuals with over £10,000 in savings and an appropriate risk appetite to invest more in stocks and shares.

 “While core investment advice has been replaced by targeted support, these aims feature again in the FCA’s recent 5 year plan, where a measure of success will be ‘A higher proportion of consumers (with £10K+ in investible assets) holding mainstream investments, helping people save for later life’.

 “When making this choice, it’s likely many individuals will be influenced by the level of interest available on cash savings and the performance and volatility of stockmarkets, both of which are hard to predict in the months and years ahead.

 However, despite the drive for pensions to invest more in UK equities, it’s worth noting that so far, there are no indications the Government is planning to look again at the previous Government’s scrapped British ISA proposals.”