The plans to end compulsory retirement at age 65 are contained with a consultation document called Phasing out the Default Retirement Age. This was published by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS).

The proposals to phase out the default retirement age will result in it being abolished by October 2011. The phasing out will begin in April 2011.

Under current rules, employers can force their staff to retire at age 65, regardless of their circumstances. An employer needs to give a minimum of six months notice of retirement.

The consultation remains open until October and comes at the same time as the government makes plans to increase the State pension age, initially to age 66.

Assuming the proposals go ahead, it will be the first time that those over age 65 years have full employment rights.

Employers will need to give careful consideration to the proposals, looking at the impact on employment legislation and related issues such as employee benefits.

Abolishing the default retirement age makes it more challenging to plan for retirement, so individuals will need to determine their own planned retirement age and align their retirement income plans accordingly.

Whilst the legal right to work beyond age 65 is a positive move, it is important to recognise that it may not be physically possible for everyone to achieve this, particularly in some types of work.

Poor health, sometimes caused by work-related factors, is often a cause in forcing early retirement. Planning to provide an income in retirement from a reasonable age remains an essential part of financial planning.

Here at Informed Choice, we have considered each of these findings in turn to see how we measure up to the requirements of individuals classed by the study as High Net Worth or Ultra High Net Worth.

We believe similar requirements are demanded by the majority of IFA clients.

Investors want to be more involved in their investment choices

This suggests that an advisory rather than discretionary approach to investment management is preferred. This approach to investing fully engages the client, because before any changes can be made to their portfolio, their approval must be obtained by the adviser.

An advisory approach also enables the investor to carefully consider the advice before taking action. With discretionary investment management, any reflection must happen after the event.

Here at Informed Choice we operate on an advisory basis.

We do work closely with a select number of discretionary fund managers, for use with clients who prefer this approach for part of their portfolio, but typically we find that investors want the control associated with an advisory approach to their money.

They want more specialised advice

We have no doubt that there has been growing demand for more specialist knowledge and advice in recent years. As a firm, we have embraced the importance of higher level professional qualifications, becoming the 99th firm of Chartered Financial Planners in 2007.

Clients want to know that their adviser has demonstrated their technical competence through professional examinations. This, combined with experience and good standards of ethical behaviour, is what makes a professional adviser.

They are demanding full product disclosure and transparency

Transparency is a very important part of our philosophy and has helped us ensure that our clients have avoided opaque investments in recent years, including private finance, hedge funds and structured products.

We deliver full product disclosure by putting our advice in writing and sending this to each client before it is presented, giving our clients the opportunity to scrutinise any small print and understand our recommendations. We always invite questions when we present our advice to ensure that our clients fully understand what we are recommending.

They are more concerned about the downside risk

Our assessment of attitude towards investment risk, reward and volatility forms a central part of our recommendations to clients. We need to know a lot about how our clients feel about risk before giving advice.

We further strengthened this assessment a number of years ago by introducing a more robust psychometric risk profiling questionnaire which we use with every client. This is combined with our Financial Planners taking the time to understand tolerance to risk before a recommendation is made.

They are validating advice through other sources

In recent years we have seen client use of Social Media increase rapidly. This is becoming an increasingly important way in which our clients find information, get answers to their questions and obtain referrals to trusted professionals.

We always encourage people to get a second opinion on advice they have received, if they are in any way unsure about its suitability. In fact, over the past twelve months we have acted as a ’sounding board’ to clients on several opportunities before they have taken action on advice from other sources.

They want products they can understand

We actively avoid unnecessarily complex financial products and investments. If we are unable to easily understand a financial product and explain how it works to our clients in plain English, it has no part in our toolkit.

They want improved client reporting and more frequent updates

We take pride in the frequency and quality of our client communication. During the credit crunch and global financial crisis, it was natural for us to continue communicating to our clients when some of our competitors were instead choosing to avoid answering awkward questions.

All of our clients receive an annual written review report as a minimum, with many receiving this level of reporting half-yearly or even quarterly. We also encourage every client to receive our free weekly email newsletter, which contains important financial news, views and opinions.

The CapGemini World Wealth Report always makes interesting reading and, as a benchmark to which we can test our own proposition, we enjoy confirming that we are delivering what clients want.

Our thanks to Steve Billingham for providing an excellent summary of the main client requirements contained with the World Wealth Report.

The protection for these payments could be secured by using life assurance which would pay out for a known period of time, providing an income or a lump sum should the ex-spouse die or become critically ill.

Such a policy could be taken out by the ex-spouse on their own life as part of the settlement although it would be sensible for the person receiving the maintenance to actually take over making the premium payments to ensure that the policy does not lapse without their knowledge should the payer stop making contributions to it!

If there is no such policy in place and the ex-spouse should die then, there could be a claim on their estate for the continuation of any unmade payments. This is hardly an ideal situation for either party and likely to be a fairly long process to arrange if it came down to it.

The good news is that life assurance is fairly cheap in the scheme of things provided the person to be insured is in reasonable health.

A Financial Planner will be able to calculate an appropriate level of cover with relevant additional benefits if necessary. There is no excuse then for not dealing with this important detail.

It came as little surprise to learn today that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) is taking enforcement action against six IFA firms due to their failings in the sale of these products.

This enforcement action is a result of a review of the use of UCIS by IFA firms, prompted by supervision and Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) assessment work completed by the regulator last year.

The FSA review addressed concerns about three main areas; lack of awareness of the regulatory requirements for UCIS, lack of understanding of the UCIS market and risks, and promotion of these unregulated investments that breached FSA rules.

The findings of this review are disappointing, to say the least.

Rules on promoting UCIS were broken by 78% of the firms reviewed. In simple terms, UCIS cannot be promoted to the general public. They can only be promoted by an authorised person, or by an unauthorised person where the promotion has been signed off by an authorised person.

A set of exemptions exist which enable promotion of UCIS to certain types of investors, namely certified high net worth investors and sophisticated investors.

In 22% of the cases reviewed, the firms failed to demonstrate the suitability of their advice. In 52% of cases, the firms did not obtain adequate information about their clients to evidence suitability.

Whilst UCIS themselves are not regulated in the same way as the regulated collective investment schemes we recommend to our clients, they remain subject to FSA rules in terms of their promotion, distribution and suitability.

Investing in an UCIS poses a higher risk to an investor than investing in a regulated collective investment scheme. They tend to invest in assets not available to regulated funds, often because they are riskier or less liquid. They are also not subject to the same investment and borrowing restrictions as regulated funds.

You also forfeit your right to support by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), if you have a complaint, and coverage by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), if you require compensation.

Sadly, as is often the case when poor selling practices are uncovered in retail financial services, high commission payments and other incentives appear to have played a role.

The FSA explained with their findings that advisers were being wooed by high commission payments from UCIS, and often get offered free trips to resorts when they are talked into offering them to their clients. That this sort of thing is still occuring in an increasingly professional advice sector is a clear signal that a further drive towards increased professionalism is needed urgently.

We can only hope that the new requirements being introduced in 2012 for all financial advisers to be qualified to a higher professional standard and operate on a more transparent remuneration basis will go some way towards solving a problem like inappropriate UCIS sales.

Successive Governments have made a real mess of the UK pensions system which used to be quite simply the best in Western Europe.

The changes that the current Government are proposing seem to be “tinkering at the edges” and this is likely to have the unintended consequences of making things worse not better.

It is a time for radical change to simplify and modernise the system and give the UK consumer the certainty around retirement planning that they deserve.

My package of recommendations (it has to come as a package and not piecemeal) is as follows:

-Introduce a Basic State pension of £10,000 per year for those with a National Insurance contribution record of 30 years. Make this pension available at age 66. Index this pension in line with CPI.

-Abolish the State Second Pension for future accrual.

-Abolish contracting out for all schemes and have just one rate of NI contributions regardless of membership of pension scheme or not.

-Remove RPI linking of public sector schemes and replace with CPI indexation.

-Pay for the above by removing tax relief for all contributions to pension arrangements.

-Allow access to pension funds and benefits that have been accumulated but take a tax charge (30%) for those who do so. Have them sign a “social contract” so that they cannot later come back and claim State benefits if they use their pension fund unwisely and run out of money.

-Abolish all the rules and regulations surrounding pensions such as the Standard Lifetime Allowance and annual contribution limits.

Those who want to retire before age 66 or who need more than £10,000 that they will get from the State will have to save to achieve that.

There will be those who argue against the abolition of tax relief claiming that tax relief encourages savings but I would argue that this is inefficient and simply is not working.

The cost of the above would need to be calculated (I don’t work for the Treasury) but it seems that taken as a package this is likely to be cost neutral or possibly even raises current revenue to the Government.

But don’t hold your breath! Politicians are fearful creatures and don’t like wholesale or radical change even when it is in the interests of the majority of consumers.

What changes do you think the Government should introduce?

During the webcast, Andrew will be discussing Financial Planning for Legal Professionals.

You can watch the webcast live here at 11.30am and a recording of the event will also be available online later today.

Martin will be joined by Andrew Hagger of comparison website moneynet.co.uk to answer questions on all aspects of savings and investments.

You can post your question at http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2010/jul/23/live-clinic-your-savings-advice and get an answer from Martin or Andrew at lunchtime on Tuesday.

Alternatively, post your questions here and we will answer them promptly.

The well respected Ernst & Young Item Club has entered the debate with a prediction that the Bank Rate will need to remain at 0.5% until at least 2014.

This prediction follows one from the newly formed Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), who believe interest rates will need to start going up again next year.

The Item Club have based their prediction on the scale of planned government cuts which are likely to hold back economic growth over the medium term.

At the same time, they say that inflation will remain above the government target of 2% for CPI for the next 18 months, with high energy prices and the VAT increase supporting this.

So, assuming that the 0.5% Bank Rate remains in place for another three years or more, what does this mean for your Financial Planning?

It suggests that the return from cash, particularly in real terms after inflation, is going to be dismal. Some good deals can be had from fixed term cash deposits, but savers are going to need to erode their capital or take greater investment risk to deliver the income levels they were used to only a couple of years ago.

Low interest rates will mean lower expenditure on debts, including mortgage repayments. The next few years will be a great time to reduce outstanding loans.

Another consequence of low interest rates is that the return from other investment asset classes is likely to be more modest. This could result in investors adopting a more global approach to investing their money, as other economies recover at a more exciting pace and create opportunities for greater returns.

A Financial Planner can assist with providing information in divorce in many areas not least being able to review financial information already gathered from your providers to identify errors and omissions (oh yes it happens a lot!) to ensure that your finances are accurately represented and that those of the other side are also fairly represented.

Some assets could have hidden value – for example long standing endowment policies which may be saleable for additional value rather than simply accepting a lower surrender value or perhaps waiting for a particular window to encash an investment to avoid penalties on surrender.

As you would expect, your Financial Planner should be able to advise what borrowing capability might be should loans need to be raised or further advances on mortgages arranged and possibly signpost you to the most appropriate lenders for the purpose.

From a practical point of view there are often many ways of achieving a separation of assets but from a financial and risk point of view, it is worth considering the effect of legally transferring assets using assignments or trusts.

A very important discussion regarding the risks involved in any settlement options in the context of your new situation should you wish to retain or indeed get allocated certain investments is imperative.

This will ensure that going forward you are comfortable with the risks you are taking on in various scenarios.

Finally, a significant area where specialist advice is absolutely essential is pensions. Pensions are often played down in settlements and sometimes ignored completely due to complexity, but nevertheless are generally an asset well worth proper investigation.

Financial planners need to hold specialist qualifications to be able to advise in this area due to it’s risks and knowledge required.

Over a year the FTSE 100 has risen from 4,559.80 (752.82 points or 16.51%).

£1 is currently worth $1.54210 US or €1.19560 Euros.

Brent Crude Oil Future is currently priced at $77.57/barrel. Gold is $1,190.50/ounce and Silver is $18.17/ounce.

The UK Bank Rate is 0.5% and CPI inflation was 3.2% for the year to June 2010.