I waste far too much time scrolling through videos on TikTok. Some are informative or educational, but the vast majority are about as intellectually stimulating as watching an episode of Love Island. However, occasionally I stumble upon one that gets my hackles up and triggers a sense of outrage.

There are some utter charlatans on social media when it comes to investing and finance topics. Content ranges from the mildly dangerous to the outright scam, with the fraudsters directing their unsuspecting viewer towards a brokerage account under their control or a Ponzi scheme.

It is difficult to combat this sort of thing. The international and largely unregulated nature of social media makes it virtually impossible for regulators to monitor and shut down dangerous content. The platforms themselves give it a good go but seem more concerned with other rule breaches.

Disappointing misinformation

So, I have become used to seeing utter nonsense about money matters on social media. It’s par for the course. But it was disappointing to see a respected journalist last month add misinformation to already inadequate levels of financial education.

Leader – FCA fighting losing battle to warn young of investment risk

Sunday Times chief money reporter Ali Hussain is no stranger to controversy regarding his views about financial advice. But he perhaps took this anti-adviser bias a step too far with his tweets railing against the commission paid on life insurance, and then suggesting people would be better off investing their premiums, effectively self-insuring.

Without regurgitating too much of what happened at the heart of this Twitterstorm, the tweets followed the publication of a story about a retired financial adviser who was unhappy with the performance of his Phoenix whole-of-life assurance policy. Within a matter of hours, on a Sunday, many advisers leapt to the defence of protection policies and pointed out the problems with the article and subsequent tweets.

There are some utter charlatans on social media when it comes to investing and finance topics

What should we do as a profession when fundamentally essential products, such as life insurance, are misrepresented in the national press and by respected journalists no less?

It would be wrong to assume that stories or social media posts like these have no impact on people’s decisions about their money. We know from the latest Financial Conduct Authority Financial Lives survey that only around one in 10 adults met with a regulated adviser in the past year. On that basis, most of the population go it alone, relying on what they read in the papers or on the internet, or seeking advice from friends and family.

When that ‘advice’ turns out to be misguided or just plain wrong, there is no recourse to complain or obtain compensation. The money is gone.

The dangers of things going wrong when unqualified, unregulated individuals purport knowledge or an opinion about financial planning make it more important to push back as a profession.

We need to call out the misinformation. We should educate the wider population, beyond that somewhat exclusive subset we call our clients, about making better decisions with their money.

Moral obligation

Arguably, it’s not our problem if people choose to base their decisions on some nonsense they read on Twitter or watch on TikTok. Leave them to it. Let them get scammed or otherwise ripped off, or take steps that will financially ruin their families. After all, we run businesses and not charities. It should be the role of the government to improve levels of financial education.

But I would suggest we have a moral obligation to combat the fud we hear on social media, in the weekend papers or down the pub. Ultimately, it reflects poorly on our profession when things go wrong, even when professional advisers play no role in the process. And leaving an entire generation of investors to learn from their mistakes is incredibly unlikely to foster future clients.

Martin Bamford: It’s time advisers migrated off Twitter

We may not have the circulation of the Sunday Times, but that challenge is rapidly resolving. Anyone can be a publisher these days, using the same social media platforms that disseminate misinformation to share accurate, helpful content.

If, each time you saw a piece of nonsense online, you responded by creating something that would help people to make better financial decisions, in time the good would overwhelm the bad.

Let’s use the same social media platforms that disseminate misinformation to share accurate, helpful content

Relying on the regulator to start making scam-warning TikTok videos, or on journalists to pass financial planning exams before writing about complex money issues, will not produce results in the immediate future.

What can happen is for you to write a blog, film a video or post financial wisdom on social media.

Martin Bamford is chief executive at Bamford Media

This article featured in the August 2021 edition of MM.

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While lockdown restrictions continue to ease, we should not lose sight of the many benefits that came with lockdown life. There is much debate over the merits of reopening offices or continuing with flexible working in the future. Advisers will also be pondering whether or not to rush back to face-to-face meetings, when safe to do so, or to continue with the wonders of Zoom.

Here’s where I stand on these two dilemmas. The pre-pandemic norm of working full-time together in an office has seen its ineffectiveness exposed in the past 12 months. I know some are passionate about returning to office life, citing the collaboration opportunities and missing the social aspects of working together. I know very few who genuinely miss the daily commute.

Office life is not suitable for everyone, but neither is working from home. There’s much talk of a ‘hybrid’ approach, with two or three days a week in the office and then a balance working remotely. Again, that might suit some but not others.

What is needed to make remote working successful in the long-term is competent management, trusting employees to get work done rather than insisting on presenteeism. I suspect many of those managers chomping at the bit to get their teams back into an office environment feel poorly equipped to continue managing people remotely, as this is an acquired skill instead of a natural ability.

On the issue of client meetings, it’s a case of horses for courses, too. We know many of our clients favour the remote approach, with its convenience and removal of much travel time. It was a fallacy to suggest that close client relationships could not be formed or maintained over Zoom calls. A new generation of Zoom-native retirees has proven that online video conferencing is not only viable but, in many cases, preferable to sitting around a meeting room or kitchen table.

What will be fascinating later this year is to see whether those who revert to the traditional methods can compete with those who work and meet remotely. That commuting and meeting travel time accumulates quickly, contributing directly to a loss in productivity. And if the time spent on commuting is not spent doing more work, it can be allocated to family time or leisure pursuits.

Martin Bamford is chief executive at Bamford Media

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One current example of The Emperor’s New Clothes is Bitcoin. What can only be described as a speculative bubble is now, sadly, pervasive within the world of financial planning, due to the unwise decision of a handful of institutions to get involved.

I believe Bitcoin is a scam. It has no tangible value and its price is being driven higher by speculators, including those able to manipulate market pricing for their own gain.

The ‘mining’ of Bitcoin consumes extraordinary amounts of energy, with one (now slightly dated, from July 2019) estimate suggesting it is using 0.21 per cent of the world’s electricity supply. At a time when our focus is shifting towards ESG, to get involved in a highly polluting digital currency is irresponsible at best.

Have IFAs been a barrier to ESG?

The current frenzy surrounding Bitcoin is making the world less safe. Whether inadvertently or intentionally, those buying or selling are funding financial crime and terrorism. The veil of anonymity offered by a decentralised crypto asset is incredibly attractive to organised crime syndicates and terrorists.

Without wishing to single out Ruffer, I wonder where it bought its £550m of Bitcoin from. Where it’s not possible to identify the seller of Bitcoin, any institutional investor speculating in this space risks the eventual ire of their regulator should it ever transpire they placed money in the pocket of criminals.

Buying Bitcoin can never sit comfortably with our commitments to client identification and anti-money laundering best practices.

Any client who asks their adviser about buying Bitcoin should be asked, in return, how they would feel about funding ISIS. Indeed, academics from Macquarie University identified Daesh as a user of Bitcoin, with strong evidence of links to a number of terror attacks in Europe and Indonesia.

Dennis Hall: My experience with Bitcoin, a banking scam and P2P lending

Leaving aside the environmental damage and abhorrent regulatory risks, Bitcoin is essentially worthless. Its enthusiasts claim scarcity supports its price, but have no idea who founder Satoshi Nakamoto is. That’s important because he or she apparently mined one million Bitcoin before disappearing in 2010.

There are plenty of other reasons for advisers to avoid going near Bitcoin. Its volatility rating is close to that of the 3:30pm at Chepstow. We have no reliable data to understand its correlation with mainstream investment assets. Assuming the price of Bitcoin continues to rise, institutional investors continue to pile in, and payment merchants like PayPal make it easier to use Bitcoin as a currency, clients will increasingly ask about adding it to their portfolios. Please say no.

Our role as advisers should be based on the suitability of recommendations and doing the right thing, instead of following the herd. I already dread thinking about the future Financial Services Compensation Scheme claims that will arise from those foolish enough to recommend or facilitate a Bitcoin investment.

Thankfully, for now, it would be challenging from a regulatory perspective to actually recommend Bitcoin or another crypto asset. But should that time come when the FCA pulls Bitcoin into its regulatory perimeter, please pledge with me now that you will do the sensible thing and steer well clear.

Martin Bamford is a non-advising chartered financial planner at Informed Choice

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The launch of his new Fortune and Freedom newsletter raises some points worthy of debate. Leaving aside any sense of outrage that Mr Brexit is dabbling in finance, I would suggest that the newsletter serve as a wake-up call for advisers on how we can effectively communicate with clients, and what the future might look like for our profession.

I’m not a fan of Farage or his politics, but I massively respect his communication skills.

Much like Donald Trump, Farage knows how to control the narrative. He uses a handful of creative tactics to engage and persuade his audience, leveraging fear and common ground to win arguments.

The approach is simple: find a broad statement that others are likely to nod along with, and then conclude that the stance is aligned with your objectives.

Another tactic is to sow division and pit groups against one another; for example, the common man (the British electorate) versus giant institutions (the EU). Sow in a healthy dose of patriotism, jingoism and military references, and the Farage recipe for influence is complete. What worked in politics, and worked (to a certain extent) in the media, can undoubtedly work in financial services too.

You might despise this approach to convincing and converting an audience, but it works. I would wager that Farage will more successfully reach and engage with a consumer audience than any established financial services firm in the country.

Learn from the master

What’s stopping financial advisers from adopting a similar approach? Why not use an understanding of human psychology to present the powerful message of financial planning?

Doing things as we have always done them is guaranteed to yield the same results. We know there is a burgeoning advice gap in the UK and no apparent solutions to reaching a mass-market audience. Could the Farage model, of giving away an opinionated investment newsletter and later selling services to a convinced audience, be the way to go?

Advisers may lack the courage of conviction to express the polarised views needed to attract some while repelling others. It doesn’t sit comfortably with people-pleasers.

It is worth keeping a close eye on Farage as his new venture grows. Subscribe to the Fortune and Freedom newsletter, if only for entertainment purposes; but, more importantly, to learn from a marketing master and consider how to adapt elements of his approach.

Martin Bamford is a non-advising chartered financial planner at Informed Choice

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Social media is an incredibly useful tool for financial advisers. At one stage, we were generating around a third of our new business enquiries from the combined efforts of content marketing, our website and a variety of social media platforms.

That benefit has fallen away somewhat in recent years, as platforms become saturated with other advisers, and similar results are only achievable through paid advertising as part of a broader marketing funnel. Like all new, shiny marketing things, the rewards become less appealing over time, as others recognise the results the early adopters are seeing.

Shouting matches on social media aren’t real debate

As a platform for sharing ideas, debate and socialising, Twitter still has its merits. There are many, many advisers I have never had the pleasure of meeting in real life, but feel I know well as a result of years of online interaction.

But there are myriad negatives too.

Twitter is an echo chamber, whether we like it or not. The curated list of people we consciously or otherwise choose to follow is likely a reflection of our values and worldview. The all too easy option to block or mute someone sharing reprehensible opinions (sorry, President Trump) means this echo chamber is concentrated over time.

There’s no room for nuance on Twitter. Working with a miserly 280 characters allows little explanation of a viewpoint. You agree or disagree; there is no middle ground. Publishing opinions in the fear of those of differing political persuasions leaves little space for progressing debate.

Twitter is a huge time suck. As efficient as I attempt to be pre-scheduling content, the temptation to dip into Tweetdeck to observe or participate in the later tweetstorm is all too great. Software engineers designed the platform to perform precisely this way. By exploiting human behavioural traits, those crafty developers reward us with dopamine hits each time we clear notifications or raise the blood pressure replying to someone who is ‘wrong’.

Sam Sloma: Tuning out the noise

Of course, it’s not just Twitter that sucks. When I open Facebook on a typical morning, I feel like banging my head against a brick wall, relishing in the stupidity of otherwise well-educated people sharing stupid things. No, you are not going to win a free motorhome by sharing that spam page.

Social media is littered with #fakenews, fraud, and fear, uncertainty and doubt. Navigating this minefield of misinformation is hard work for even the most cynical online warrior.

If this enforced quarantine has taught me one thing, it’s that habits can be changed. A social media diet feels like the right place to start, before identifying a longer-term solution. Judging by the departure of several respected financial advisers from Twitter, I’m far from alone in feeling this way.

Martin Bamford is head of client education at Informed Choice

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There’s a lot of ‘bad stuff’ associated with the pandemic. The latest indications suggest we’re looking at months rather than weeks in lockdown, and then continued social distancing measures.

One of the gripes within the financial advice profession is the absence of government financial support. Those advisers who work from home don’t qualify for the small business rates relief grant scheme – no £10,000 cash grant for them. Advisers running limited companies, remunerated mainly through dividends, have no 80 per cent of self-employed earnings coming their way. And the suggestion we ‘furlough’ ourselves for three months is fine in practice, but unlikely to sit well with clients and their continued servicing needs.

Falling investment markets mean, in many cases, lower recurring revenues this year. For firms with already razor-thin margins, and in the absence of the ability to write much new business, 2020 could be incredibly lean. This year may even see a spike in business sales and consolidator activity.

40% of advice firms forced to furlough staff

Opportunities ahead

But it’s not all doom and gloom. The next few months offer all advisers an unprecedented opportunity to achieve several things.

First, it’s time to review. Use this new-found time to consider your purpose in business, how you work with clients, and how you communicate your values to the wider world. As a profession, we’re not excellent at presenting ourselves to an audience beyond our existing clients. That’s why, when the FCA carried out its Financial Lives survey in 2018, it discovered that only 39 per cent of consumers trusted financial firms to be honest and transparent in their dealings with them.

We can boost these numbers in the months ahead by sharing genuinely useful content, designed to answer those burning questions we know consumers have about their budgets, insurance policies, investments and pensions.

Online CPD

The second task for the lockdown is to consume. As advisers, we’re pretty good at keeping our CPD up to date by attending product and fund provider events. Gone now are the prawn sandwich and Powerpoint presentation lunches, so instead the onus is on us to identify the most valuable learning materials as we continue to grow professionally.

I’ve already started using this time to consume more podcasts, audiobooks and video courses. While not directly related to financial advice, the content I’m consuming is all intentional, to build relevant skills and absorbing knowledge I’ll need at a later date.

Listen to our daily podcast series on how Covid-19 will impact the world of financial planning

Third, this is an incredible opportunity to create. Advisers should launch a podcast, create a YouTube channel or even write a book during this time. As our ideal clients are trapped at home, and once the initial shock of the crisis has settled a little, consumption of written, audio and video content will go through the roof.

We can view the coronavirus crisis as a bad thing, or we can identify the opportunities for coming out the other side in better shape than ever.

Martin Bamford is a chartered financial planner at Informed Choice

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Last year, for the second time in my career, I stepped away from giving regulated advice to clients. It’s been a few years coming; spending more time working on my other business, a financial services marketing agency, means less time for building and maintaining financial plans for clients. I’m fortunate to have a group of excellent colleagues who can more than fill my shoes.

We draw so much of our identity from our careers that it’s only natural to feel a little melancholic at the loss of one job title. Despite continuing to have day-to-day involvement in the business, with responsibility for investment research, marketing and client communications, and (joy of joys) regulatory reporting, the ability to advise members of the public is a special honour.

Weirdly, my stepping back from the provision of regulated advice coincided nicely with the introduction of the SMCR. One consequence of this regulation is that, on the Financial Services Register at least, the FCA lists me as an approved person, but not my non-senior manager colleagues. They are, apparently, of a status where “Regulatory approval no longer required”.

FCA Register changes draw concern from advisers

What a consumer must think about this is anyone’s guess. Here’s me, a chartered financial planner who doesn’t give financial advice, listed on the official FCA register as ‘Active’, while my colleagues who do provide financial advice are shown with a bewildering regulatory description alongside their names.

At worst, it’s a green light for scammers to rip off great swathes of vulnerable consumers. The genius at the FCA who decided this approach was anything approaching a sensible idea needs their head examining.

Profile: ‘For a small firm we have a big presence’

Perhaps with a new government in power, and Brexit assured for the end January, we might see a more measured approach to regulation in the future. I live in hope. Depending on the trade deals struck, and regulatory alignment required, it’s nice to think that future changes to the rulebook could place common sense and consumer protection ahead of eurocratic-inspired regulatory fluff.

We might even see Boris Johnson’s top aide, Dominic Cummings, turn his attention to the FCA, after he tackles what he perceives as billions of wasted spend in defence procurement. But FCA spending is less critical to government mandarins than areas like defence or the NHS. It’s less important to be frugal when it’s not taxpayer money at stake, but levies on regulated firms.

Martin Bamford: A wake-up call for financial planners

There’s a matter of scale too. NHS spending is expected to be around £134bn in 2019/20. The FCA has an annual budget of approximately £600m, to which of course we should add a further £532m for the FSCS to pay for failed regulation. And another £46m interim levy to pay for rising pension claims. And a further £332m for the FOS, to arbitrate on disputes between disgruntled customers and regulated firms.

My maths makes that £1.5bn plus change. Sure, nowhere near the scale of the NHS budget or the amount spent on defence procurement, but a sizeable sum nevertheless. This money is not taxpayer money, but money paid by advisers, insurers and banks, and therefore money paid by customers of regulated firms.

Much like the Treasury, we don’t have any of our own money in the financial services sector. We have the charges paid by our clients and customers, and they continue to indirectly suffer the consequences of flawed financial services regulation.

Martin Bamford is chief executive at Bamford Media

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Put simply, we don’t visit travel agents to book holidays any more. We log on to our devices and compare a wide range of deals before buying the most competitive. Thomas Cook simply failed to move with the times.

It’s a shame, because Thomas Cook had real brand equity. Many of us still get nostalgic over brands such as Blockbuster and Woolworths.

These businesses didn’t fail because we fell out of love with them, but because they weren’t prepared to accept the world was changing.

There’s a lesson here for financial planners. Our world is changing too. One of my biggest bugbears as a financial services marketer is spotting the signs of this failure to adapt to change. It’s the financial adviser who still believes their value lies in the products they recommend. Or the adviser who relies on referrals from existing clients and, therefore, thinks they have no need for a modern website.

A changing market environment won’t kill your business overnight. It’s more like death by a thousand cuts. You might not notice your client enquiries gradually drying up, as they turn to new ways to find their professional advisers. The loss of a client here and there can be easily justified as natural wastage.

Martin Bamford: How the next recession will test planning

Then you realise the business isn’t looking quite as healthy as it once did. Perhaps you blame the ever-growing burden of regulation or that inflated professional indemnity insurance premium you paid this year. You point the finger at a change in the algorithms used by the adviser directories, which no longer serve up as many of the right client enquiries. Perhaps you blame Brexit.

But in truth, that slow failure was down to you refusing to accept that change is a constant and something we must look squarely in the face on a daily basis. While your competitors were learning the art of storytelling, behavioural coaching and remote delivery of services, you stuck to your knitting and hoped your clients would remain loyal forever.

Financial advisers should ‘shut up and listen’

I’m pretty sure Thomas Cook will serve as a wake-up call for some financial planners. They will want to rethink how they do things today and what their business might look like in a decade.

One of my favourite quotes about change comes from Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who once said: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”

Martin Bamford is a chartered financial planner at Informed Choice

Follow him on Twitter @martinbamford

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It’s not that I don’t firmly believe we’ve got reasons to be cheerful. Some beautiful things are happening right now in the fields of technology and healthcare that should prompt a lot of positivity.

My big concern is that many financial planners are setting themselves up for a massive fall.

It’s July 2019. If we use the US economy as a guide, then we’re now more than a decade into a period of sustained economic growth. In fairness, the first few years of that growth weren’t entirely pretty. But it was growth regardless.

Since the 1950s, economic cycles have lasted for an average of five-and-a-half years. Some were shorter and some longer. But the average in modern times is close to half that still in progress today.

I can’t see the future. My successes in predicting the election of Donald Trump, the Brexit referendum result and the failure of Neil Woodford were nothing more than educated guesses, luck, and open-minded thinking about the outcome.

But it doesn’t take a soothsayer to recognise that we’re nearing the end of this current period of economic expansion. It might not happen this year or next, but before too long, we will enter a period of recession.

When a recession takes place, it doesn’t always result in falls in the capital markets. It’s hard to predict what might happen to global stock markets when the next recession collides with years of central bank-funded, artificial capital market inflation.

Martin Bamford: Advisers can’t keep outsiders on the outside

For the sake of argument, let’s hypothesise a substantial and prolonged global equity market correction takes place. What might that look like for financial planners and their clients?

First, for a large number of what we commonly refer to as “next generation” planners, it’s going to be the first time they have personally experienced the sky falling in during their professional careers. How we respond to theoretical events is likely to differ from how we respond in practice.

Secondly, it will be the first time it’s happened, to any real extent, since the onset of pension freedoms. The last time the markets tanked, buying an annuity with your pension fund was the norm. Today, the majority of that post-retirement pension wealth is exposed to the markets.

Finally, those following the ‘markets always win in the long-term’ model, and investing their client assets entirely into global equity index tracker funds, will have the opportunity of a lifetime to test their behavioural coaching skills.

I’m absolutely on board with the idea that it is investor behaviour rather than markets that lose money. Humans are rubbish investors, as the fascinating field of behavioural finance continues to discover.

I would suggest that, even with a highly skilled and passionate financial coach in your corner, avoiding the heuristics that cause us to sell when all those around us are losing their heads is not impossible, but it is indeed challenging.

We’ve had a taste in recent weeks of what happens when a popular fund manager combines a liquid fund structure with a high proportion of illiquid funds. When that illiquidity is systemic, rather than isolated to fund manager carelessness, we face trouble on a much bigger scale.

There’s never been a more critical time to apply some of the fundamentals of sound financial planning, including diversification, holding healthy cash reserves, and modelling catastrophe scenarios.

Martin Bamford is a chartered financial planner at Informed Choice

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“But I don’t have an estate,” they interjected. That service was swiftly renamed “inheritance tax planning”, with the desire to do what it says on the tin.

When I’m writing the show notes for my podcast each week, I’ll often catch myself relaxing into the use of technical terms. If we feel comfortable throwing around three-letter acronyms and technical jargon, it’s because we live and breathe this stuff. Our clients don’t.

I understand the temptation to live in a world of complexity. After investing countless hours in acquiring this advanced technical knowledge, through examinations and on-the-job experience, why dumb it down again?

There’s an argument that all professions create high barriers to entry, using jargon and customs to keep outsiders on the outside. Within retail financial services, add the FCA rulebook, massive Financial Services Compensation Scheme levies, capital adequacy requirements, huge professional indemnity insurance premiums and a multitude of other barriers. You can’t sit with us.

I do not doubt that the majority of the work we all do for our clients is of high value and extremely worthwhile. As we do this great work, we need to take care not to neglect the basics. At the end of last week, I got around to completing some household admin tasks. I hate doing these and, despite what the letters after my name might suggest, I’m not as committed to my own financial planning as that of my clients.

One of the long-overdue items on my task list was to review our home energy contract. The one-year fixed-term contract was about to expire and the current provider was proposing a hefty price rise. Five minutes later on a meerkat-inspired website and the job was done. Five minutes and £388 better off in 2019.

Convert that to an hourly rate and I need to give up both of my businesses, to devote my time entirely to finding more competitive gas and energy bills.

The exercise got me thinking about the annual wealth check agenda we work through with each of our clients, at least once a year. For some reason I can’t now understand, reviewing energy contracts isn’t currently on that agenda.

A super-complaint filed by Citizens Advice suggests consumers are suffering a £4bn-a-year “loyalty penalty” by not reviewing and switching a small number of household bills. That’s an average of £877 a year we could, as financial planners, save our clients.

At a time when clients are becoming increasingly sensitive to fees, surely making substantial savings like this, on top of the savings we make by recommending the most suitable investments and product wrappers, would engender greater loyalty.

Martin Bamford is managing director of Informed Choice

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At 122 years, 164 days old, Madame Calment had an exceptional life story, with a couple of relevant lessons for financial planning.

Firstly, she lived life to the full, debunking stereotypes of a traditional retirement. She lived independently until 110 years old, when she moved to a nursing home after starting a small fire in her house in a cooking accident.

Secondly, she struck a deal with her lawyer for a contingency contract to sell her apartment.

The deal meant that her lawyer, André-François Raffray, would pay her 2,500 francs a month for the rest of her life.

Raffray signed the contingent contract when Calment was 90 years old, not expecting his tenant to live for a further 32 years, but also outlive him by two. Her comment on the situation? “In life, one sometimes makes bad deals.”

In recent months, some doubt has been raised over the legitimacy of Calment. There have been allegations she may have died at a younger age, only for her identity to be assumed by her daughter, no doubt to continue claiming the monthly income from the poor lawyer. If proven, there is probably a financial planning lesson there too.

We recently shared a collective laugh at the case of 69-year-old Emile Ratelband in the Netherlands, who failed to convince a court to legally reduce his age. Ratelband wanted to be legally aged 49 instead, so he could avoid “discrimination”.

He made the not-particularly-strong case that you can legally change your name and gender, so why not your date of birth? Had he succeeded in his legal battle, he argued it would improve his prospects for raising a mortgage.

One of my team members has recently taken up motor racing. If I told you her age I would be in deep trouble but I can tell you that Lewis Hamilton is a fair bit younger.

Another colleague has now taken up running and proves that sport of any type is not the exclusive preserve of the young. She is in her early 60s and by no means the oldest member of her local running club which meets on a Sunday evening.

It is, of course, wholly positive that the law prevents us from discriminating against others on the basis of age. As businesses, we can no longer force employment on the basis of a birthday. But legislation cannot stop stereotypes linked to age, whether young or old.

Our health as we get older can also throw up roadblocks to doing everything we want to do, despite some outliers demonstrating physical prowess long past a traditional retirement age.

What has this got to do with financial planning? Well, we often ask a person how old they are and perhaps we are guilty of subconsciously categorising people. It is too easy to hear an age and immediately, albeit without intention, attach preconceptions to that number.

I am not suggesting that we make age a moving feast and permit legal changes to birth dates, in order to make our prospects in life easier. We should, however, make every effort to see the person and not the age.

Martin Bamford is managing director at Informed Choice

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