Amongst the backdrop of the Labour government changes, and ten years since pension freedoms, join Standard Life as they bring to life how people are thinking and feeling about retirement, using their flagship Retirement Voice research to put real clients’ views on retirement front-and-centre.

With the changes to policy afoot and client sentiment shifting, where do the biggest risks lie for your clients? And what is the Retirement Risk Zone - and why does it matter?

This session will consider the direction of travel for retirement planning and take you through practical examples around where there’s opportunity to re-think retirement for your clients.

The thematic review of retirement income advice highlights the need for a different approach as clients move from saving to spending. The psychological and financial elements of moving from ‘accumulation’ to ‘decumulation’ present a number of challenges and it’s important that the risks are covered and actions evidenced.

In this session, we’ll look at the key aspects and the ‘foreseeable harms’ that need to be accounted for. We’ll also explore the need to consider all strategies, including guaranteed income and the benefits from a regulatory, firm and, most importantly, client perspective.

By attending this session, you’ll be able to:

• Identify the main retirement advice aspects through the ‘consumption frame’.
• Explore the components of an advice process for retiring clients. 
• Recognise the place for guaranteed income as part of an overall strategy.

The recent FCA thematic review has shone a light on retirement income advice but what does it mean on a practical level for advisers when it comes to ensuring good client outcomes? This session will equip advisers with tangible tools and techniques to ensure that clients receive suitable and appropriate advice that will meet their individual needs. Our panel will explore innovative strategies to personalise income plans, share best practices to address and mitigate individual risk profiles, and empower clients to make informed decisions about their financial future.

What allocation strategies are multi-asset managers using right now to help protect portfolios against inflation and ever-shifting market dynamics? What is the objective, role and opportunity for alternatives and how can diversified portfolios be created without increasing costs?

July 2025 will mark two years since the consumer duty was first introduced for open products, and much has changed even in this relatively short space of time. In this session, we’ll explore changes in the holistic wealth space as part of the consumer duty and the importance of acting to avoid foreseeable harm. Often this requires a greater consideration of client’s protection needs to ensure good outcomes.

A critical part of the consumer duty is the price and value outcome, but value in particular is difficult to define. So, this presentation touches on research undertaken to help identify value, and whether advisers need to do more to articulate the value they provide in the advice process. We’ll also remind advisers of the importance of documenting and evidencing their adherence to the consumer duty and the vital part this plays in demonstrating progress against a strategy for your clients.

By the end of this session, you’ll be able to:

• Identify the key concerns of the regulator since the inception of the consumer duty
• Explain the importance of identifying protection needs as a part of the consumer duty
• Identify the factors influencing consumer’s perception of value from financial advice
  

Insights into changing trends in the platform market to help you select and implement the right investment platform for your business.

Social media is creating a generation of hyper-risk frenetic investors whose fear of missing out (FOMO) dominates all else. But could this dangerous force be harnessed for good by advisers to get more people investing sooner and with more conviction?

The outcomes of The Consumer Duty and Thematic Review of Retirement, and the subsequent challenges present to advisers, have led some to claim that bespoke investment management is a less relevant proposition. Despite a shift towards unitised investment solutions, we believe high net worth individuals still require a specialised approach.

This session will argue that bespoke investment management is essential for:

Avoiding foreseeable harms: Full control and visibility to help to avoid foreseeable harm to clients.

Effective Tax Management: Tailored strategies optimise tax efficiency across accounts and wrappers.

Decumulation: Personalised, dynamic solutions to help manage drawdown and long-term income.

Value over cost: A truly personal service offering real value, not just low cost.

Adaptability: Flexibility to navigate challenging investment environments and inflation. Only bespoke investment management can offer such a well-rounded service so yes, its death has been greatly exaggerated.

By the end of this presentation, you will be able to explain:

• The scale of the impact that recent regulation has had on managing bespoke portfolios.
• The difficulties managing foreseeable in unitised solutions.
• How taking a fluid approach to investing allows the flexibility to adjust portfolios and soften any potential negative impact
• How personal service offers rounded value (part of the cost and value element on Consumer Duty)
  

With a need to create positive client outcomes, protection can play a vital role in safeguarding and securing your clients against future life and health uncertainties, as well as wealth.

Our panel of experts will equip you with the practical knowledge, strategies and tools needed to incorporate protection into a comprehensive and holistic offering, protecting and preserving the financial wellbeing of your clients.

At a time when more and more investors are being led by the nose into passive portfolios that offer cheaper fees in return for hidden risks, we think quality active management provides a better product with more reliable results.

While it costs slightly more today, we think that a modest active fee for tried and tested management is a small price to pay for a range of benefits that become clear over longer timeframes. Most crucial are better risk management and more diverse portfolios. With three-quarters of the MSCI World Index invested in the US and fully 24% in just nine stocks – all in the same industry, all in the same nation – we believe that avoiding these risks is highly underrated.

Yet active multi-asset managers’ ability to target specific results, rather than simply take what the market gives you, is one of active management’s greatest strengths. It can also make for easier client journeys. Loss aversion is real: big swings in portfolio values rattle most investors and often leads to them insisting on rash decisions at the wrong times.

In a time when markets have roared ahead, driven by an ever-smaller group of companies, getting what the market serves up has been considered a feature of passive investing. However, that opinion may change sharply when markets start falling.

Put simply, we think active multi-asset portfolios offer better value than their passive counterparts. • 3 SMART objectives (required for CPD):

By the end of this session you will be able

• Explain why active management is needed to manage risk
• Describe the heightened risks caused by the outperformance of the “Magnificent 7” (US technology stocks) over 2023/4
• State the impacts of the Trump presidency on global markets

We will be looking at multi-asset solutions and how these can be constructed using passive instruments. Even if you are an advocate of passive investing, many of the benefits of this approach are based on active decisions. For example: the asset allocation process, the passive instruments that are used, and how (or if) portfolios are rebalanced. Each of these decisions has an impact on the outcome for investors. In our session, we will consider three commonly used approaches and evaluate the pros and cons of each.

Learning outcomes:

• Understand how multi-asset solutions can be constructed using passive instruments.
• Identify the importance of active decisions in passive investing.
• Evaluate the pros and cons of three commonly used approaches in constructing multi-asset solutions.
  

Within the multi-asset investment solution space, there is more choice in the marketplace than there has ever been. Alongside this, client needs and preferences are continually diverging and evolving. It’s important to understand what those investment options are and find the optimal solution for clients.

By attending this session, you’ll be able to:

• Understand how different multi-asset portfolio solutions can cater for clients’ different investment objectives
• Understand the market outlook for 2025 and implications for portfolio positioning
• Identify the key features of Fully Diversified, Low Cost and MPS solutions
  

In this panel discussion we speak to the very best in the businesses and learn their secrets at attracting and retaining the next generation of financial advisers.

• How do you start building a graduate or apprenticeship program to attract talented individuals?
• How can providers offer support and expertise to smaller firms trying to recruit new talent?
• What does good training look like?
• How are people incentivised beyond compensation, and what does a good career pathway look like?
• How can you look after the resilience and wellbeing of your teams?
• What skills do the next generation of advisers need?
• How can you allow new talent to thrive, and add value to the business with their diversity of opinion and ideas

The headlines like to tell you how much consolidation there is in the financial advice market, but the headline you never see is "small to medium sized advice business is hugely profitable and doesn't consolidate" because, well, good news doesn't sell.

However, there has arguably never been a better time to be an adviser, if (and this is a big if) you have the drivers of value within your business clearly in your sights.

Using information from the thousands of advice firms to which we provide services, we look at the things that are driving the growth or destruction of enterprise value, explore why consolidation doesn't work (most of the time) and what should be on your to do list whether you are planning on going or growing.

82% of financial advisers now consider NS&I to be the most trusted savings provider in the UK, and adviser advocacy in NS&I consistently sits around 8 out of 10 or above. However, despite this high level of engagement, advice firms tell us there’s a lot more they’d like to know about the Treasury-backed savings organisation.

When cash can often represent up to 20% of a client’s portfolio, offering both liquidity and peace of mind, and NS&I is usually a popular consideration in this market, it’s naturally key for advisers and their colleagues to be conversant in this area. However, it perhaps doesn’t receive the airtime that other asset types do.

So come along to this session to learn all about the unique, the wonderful and the just plain weird facets of this beloved institution, and how we can really help you in your discussions with your clients and planning their financial futures.

Learning outcomes

• Obtain a deeper understanding of NS&I’s Treasury-backed savings options, the related tax implications and how the products can be used in different client scenarios as part of the financial planning process.
• Learn some interesting facts, figures and anecdotes about the UK’s most unique financial services product – Premium Bonds – that you can use in your conversations with clients.
• Discover how NS&I products can be used within Trusts, SIPPs and SSASs.
• Learn about NS&I’s large, multi-year transformation programme, our new intermediary strategy and future vision, and what all of these significant developments mean for you and your clients.
  

For years financial advisers have been told that fully integrated technology solutions will transform how they run their business, improve efficiency and enhance client experiences - but many at the sharp end will tell you that is still a long way off from practical reality. And many will even question whether it is actually desirable to have one system that does it all.

Our panel will examine how the adviser tech ecosystem is evolving and making a difference to their business, their process, and more important, their client outcomes. We explore the practical difference technology is making in addressing the challenges covered throughout the day and hear about the realities of technology adoption and integration across an advice business.

By the end of this session, attendees will:

• Learn about the new innovations and technologies driving the advice ecosystem
• Adapt to evolving client expectations by leveraging technology to improve client experience and deliver personalised, financial planning and advisory services.
• Set efficient and realistic project and implementation goals across your business
  

Intergenerational imperatives:

• The family imperatives
• The wealth management imperatives
• The taxation imperatives
• The adviser business value imperative

The intergenerational bond in practice : Its time has come.   

• Tax effective accumulation
• Tax effective decumulation
• Tax effective

Wealth transfer Learning Objectives:

To understand and use in financial planning strategy

• The importance of taking an intergenerational approach through all stages of financial planning
• The current taxation context for intergenerational planning
• The role of an onshore investment bond alone and with trusts to deliver tax effective intergenerational outcomes
  

• An overview of the key post-Budget inheritance tax consultations, what they cover, and when they may finish. Including when we may likely see draft legislation.
• The tax impact of acting now vs when the new pension and BR rules come into play.
• A deep dive into new client planning scenarios that arose from the Budget.