Enjoy your welsh (4)

It’s been a week when more starts to click into place for firms sorting out policy and actions for the rest of this year. The Finance Bill is out for consultation and that in itself is a jolly read as well as the update from HMRC re the VAT. Whilst in the latter case there is no change in the rules, the wording now gives advisers the wherewithal to word their propositions correctly to be able to comply. The IFP will be debating this subject at the first Accredited Financial Planning Firm conference on 21/22 March in London.

We had our first IFP conference committee meeting of the year and a really exciting agenda is building for all of our events, including the annual conference 1-3 October. There has also been a tremendous engagement from the sponsors who are naturally keen to be involved as the Financial Planning profession starts to really grow. There were lots of good suggestions for speaking slots. Many suggested Harry Rednapp to share some of his tax planning ideas with us and another popular suggestion was Sir (now Mr) Fred Goodwin on where it all went wrong. Because he still has his pension rather than his letters, he doesn’t yet need the money and he certainly doesn’t need the publicity. Just now I had a further suggestion that Chris Huhne might be available with some tips for getting around regulation. We are however seriously checking out the Facebook team given that they have decided to float.  We will see how we get on.

I can tell you however, that we have already got speakers from the UK (as you would expect), Australia, America and Canada and those on twitter will be very pleased with one of our key notes. All will start to be dripped out soon, but in the meantime we are concentrating on the first event of the year which is the Financial Planning Conference – the only way of doing business which will take place on 23 Feb at the Brewery. We have been able to secure a bigger room so we can now welcome more delegates. This is a great event for those working out where their real value is post 2013 when they need to ask their clients to pay for something tangible.

Now getting the hang of Skype, I had the pleasure of speaking to Marie Bermingham from Australia on Thursday morning to discuss her plans which include the UK. I was slightly distracted because I know that Australia is at the bottom of the world and as a child always thought that things would be upside down but wasn’t expecting this to be the case on Skype. Marie was quick to confirm that the reason that she kept turning around was no magic of geography but merely the antics of her iPad!

Great to catch up with old friends as well as meet new people in this business and had lunch with Hugh Titcomb who I used to work with at Flemings a hundred years ago. We were joined by Kevin Garforth (man from Liverpool) who we both worked with as well. Kevin is now working with the IFP on the development side for two days a week as we look to help businesses prepare for the opportunities post 2012 and to grow the membership.

I was also able to catch up with an old school friend, Mark Wyatt, yesterday for lunch (I know two lunches in January in one week which is so good for the diet). It is funny reading the Daily Mail (research purposes only) today and looking at the article on how the game has been cleaned up in recent years. Mark would have played for England back in the day if he hadn’t punched Eddie Butler in a match the week before the international. Even the Welsh enjoyed that (punching Eddie Butler not Mark not playing)! Like many of us, Mark is now the size of three number eights and he was just settling up an old wager from the Rugby World Cup where Wales of course had been more successful than England. A further wager has been laid for the Six Nations which of course starts this weekend.

So, rugby all the way this weekend all wrapped up warm just in case there is any snow and then back to IFP TV and some more superstars on Monday as well as looking forward to the Professional Adviser Awards next Thursday.  I have already won their personality of the year and there is no “best newcomer in a lifetime achievement award” so I will be able to relax instead with an excellent table of guests.

Have a great weekend and maybe see you next week.