Financial Focus: Winter 2025

Welcome to our new-look quarterly Insights newsletter.

The Autumn Budget, a winter Budget in all but name appearing as it has only six weeks from Christmas, wasn’t too full of festive cheer, with the headline changes being a further extension to the Conservative-introduced freeze on income tax thresholds and personal allowances, now scheduled to remain at current levels into the next decade.

A cap on tax-free pension contributions will be introduced from 2029, and in 2028 the High Value Council Tax Surcharge is introduced for all owners of property over £2 million. These changes appear as inflation levels are gradually inching closer to the government’s 2% target. But do you really have a grasp of the cumulative inflation of the past five years? Annual CPI figures can obscure the bigger picture, making things appear rosier than they really are. If you have money earmarked for a financial gift to a child or grandchild this Christmas, consider how the structure of the product will achieve its goals to avoid it drifting from targets as has been the fate of some maturing child trust funds.