Stories of the week
1) No More Little Pots of Pensions
New rules in force from April 2026 let pension providers automatically consolidate dormant pension pots under £1,000 without needing the member’s consent.
From April 2026, providers can transfer deferred small pots (typically under £1,000 and inactive for at least 12 months) into either the member’s current active scheme or a designated default consolidator. Members get notified, but no longer need to take any action for the move to happen. NI numbers will be used to link disparate accounts so the system can find the pots in the first place. By 31 October 2026, every pension provider also has to be connected to the Pensions Dashboard ecosystem, which is what makes the matching realistically possible at scale.
What’s the problem? Around 13 million deferred pots in the UK sit under £1,000, and the number is rising by about a million a year. Short jobs leave behind tiny pots, providers happily charge admin fees on them, and savers forget they exist. Most are too small to be worth the friction of a manual transfer, so they sit there decaying.
What’s changing? The default flips. Inertia used to mean your money stayed scattered. Now inertia means it gets gathered up. Limits on admin fees for small dormant pots also come in alongside the consolidation framework.
The Wiseones Take: This is genuinely good policy. The small pots problem has been talked about for a decade and finally something concrete has happened. The catch is the destination. If your “active scheme” is a high-charging legacy default, automatic consolidation could move money from a slightly bad pot into a slightly worse pot at scale. The right move for most people in 2026 is not to ignore the notifications. When the letters start landing, check what fund your active workplace pension actually defaults to, what the ongoing charge figure looks like, and whether the consolidator landing zone is one you would have picked yourself. Defaults matter even more now that they are doing the choosing for you.
2) Level 2 Advisers for the Box Tick Advice
The FCA’s targeted support regime went live on 6 April 2026, and providers are already staffing it with Level 2 qualified people under supervision rather than fully qualified advisers.
The FCA Board signed off the final targeted support rules on 26 February 2026, firms could apply for permission from 2 March, and the regime went live on 6 April. Targeted support lets a firm make suggestions designed for groups of consumers with common characteristics, sitting between full guidance and full personal advice. Crucially, it does not require the deliverer to hold a Level 4 Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning. Level 2 qualified staff under supervision can do the job.
What’s the problem? The advice gap is real. Most people will never pay for full regulated advice, and a lot of them make poor decisions because no one is allowed to point them toward the obvious answer. Targeted support is supposed to plug that gap.
What’s changing? Providers do not have to wait for staff to grind through to Chartered or CAS status to put them in front of customers. Many large firms are already building targeted support teams around supervised Level 2 hires, because the unit economics are very different from a Level 4 advice desk.
The Wiseones Take: Help for the people who would otherwise get nothing is a win. The risk is that targeted support becomes the destination, not a stepping stone. If providers staff their consumer-facing teams entirely with supervised Level 2 box-tickers, the path from “I am training” to “I can give real advice” gets less attractive. That is a slow brain drain on the qualified-adviser pipeline at exactly the moment we should be growing it. The other risk is the lived experience: scripts, decision trees, and a lot of “computer says no” for anything that does not fit the predefined customer group. If your situation is genuinely complex, pay for proper advice. If it is simple, targeted support is probably better than nothing, just go in knowing what it is.
3) Government Goes Nuts for Investing
Chancellor Rachel Reeves launched “Savvy the Squirrel” at the London Stock Exchange this week, the mascot for a new government campaign to push Britons out of cash and into investments.
Savvy is the face of the “Invest for the Future” campaign, unveiled on 23 April 2026. Vanguard data quoted alongside the launch puts £200bn of excess UK cash sitting in savings that could plausibly be invested. The campaign lands at the same time as the Cash ISA allowance gets cut from £20,000 to £12,000 for those under 65 from the next tax year, which is the actual lever the Treasury is pulling. Comparisons are already being drawn to the British Gas “Tell Sid” campaign of the 1980s and the rather less successful “Workie” auto-enrolment mascot of 2015.
What’s the problem? Cash deposits have been losing real value to inflation for years, but the cultural default in the UK is to save, not invest. Younger savers in particular are sitting on cash they will need in 30 years’ time, watching it melt.
What’s changing? The squeeze on the Cash ISA allowance is the headline policy move. The squirrel is the marketing layer. The combination is meant to nudge people from “I’ll keep it safe in cash” to “I’ll put some of it to work”.
The Wiseones Take: Squirrels store nuts. They literally are the mascot for hoarding, which is the exact behaviour the campaign is trying to break. Every time you actually need a squirrel to have nuts, half of them are missing or buried somewhere they can’t remember. Picking that animal to represent investing is, to put it kindly, an interesting choice. That said, the underlying push is right. £200bn parked in cash is a real cost to households over a decade, and even a modest £25 a month into a low-cost global index beats £25 a month in a Cash ISA over a long horizon almost every time. Take the nudge, ignore the mascot.
Rate Watch
- Bank of England Bank Rate: 3.75% ↔️ (Held 19 March, next decision 30 April)
- UK mortgage rates (typical averages, Rightmove 24 April):
- 2-year fixed (75% LTV): ~5.10% 🔽 0.16%. Up 0.58% from last year.
- 5-year fixed (75% LTV): ~5.10% 🔽 0.14%. Up 0.61% from last year.
- UK GDP: +1.3% (February 2025 to February 2026)
- UK Inflation Rates year on year (March 2026, released 22 April):
- UK CPI: 3.3% 🔼 0.3%
- UK CPIH: 3.4% (including housing costs) 🔼 0.2%
- UK RPI: 4.3% 🔼 0.7%
Inflation went the wrong way in March, with food and motor fuels doing most of the damage. That makes the 30 April MPC meeting more interesting than it looked a fortnight ago.
Upcoming Dates For Your Diary
April 2026
- 30 April: Bank of England MPC interest rate decision
May 2026
- 15 May: ONS Q1 2026 preliminary GDP estimate (provisional)
- 31 May: Employer P60 deadline
June 2026
- 18 June: Bank of England MPC interest rate decision
July 2026
- 6 July: FCA commodity derivatives reforms go live
- 30 July: Bank of England MPC interest rate decision
October 2026
- 31 October: Deadline for all pension providers to connect to the Pensions Dashboard ecosystem
Wise Money Tips
- Use your ISA allowance before it resets. Up to £20,000 across ISAs in 2026/27, frozen until April 2031. Don’t forget Junior ISA £9,000 and Lifetime ISA £4,000, both also frozen to April 2031.
- Dividend tax rose on 6 April 2026. Ordinary rate 8.75% to 10.75%, upper rate 33.75% to 35.75%. Additional rate stays at 39.35%. If you hold income shares outside a wrapper, it is worth stress-testing whether ISA or pension sheltering is now worth it.
- Top up pensions and check carry forward. Annual allowance is £60,000 for 2026/27. Tapering can apply for higher earners. Unused allowance from the previous three tax years can often be carried forward.
- VCT timing matters this year. From 6 April 2026, VCT income tax relief dropped to 20% (down from 30%). VCT relief cannot be carried back, so the tax year you subscribe in is the one that counts.
- EIS and SEIS still allow carry back. Unlike VCTs, EIS and SEIS income tax relief can usually be carried back to the previous tax year, which is useful if your tax bill is lumpy.
- Use the small but real allowances. Personal Savings Allowance (£1,000 for basic rate, £500 for higher rate, £0 for additional rate), Marriage Allowance transfer, and the £3,000 annual IHT gifting exemption (resets each tax year, doesn’t roll over).
- State Pension uplift from 6 April 2026. Full new State Pension: £230.25 to £241.30 per week. Basic State Pension: £176.45 to £184.90 per week.
- Check your NI record, especially age 50+. A top-up year can materially improve your State Pension outcome. Pull your forecast and identify gaps before making any irreversible year-end decisions.
- Review your mortgage at least six months before the fixed rate ends. Most lenders let you lock in a new deal in advance.
- Check your workplace pension default fund every 12 months. Defaults change quietly when providers rebrand or get sold.
- Never move money on the back of a cold call, a WhatsApp tip, or a social media ad. Every scam starts that way.
Thanks for reading. See you next Friday.