Self-worth: Pension prospects and financial resilience of the self-employed

Susannah Streeter: Hello, and welcome to Switch Your Money On. I’m Susannah Streeter – Head of Money and Markets – here at Hargreaves Lansdown.

Sarah Coles: And I’m Sarah Coles – the Head of Personal Finance.

Susannah Streeter: So, Sarah – we’re enjoying the delights of recording in our own homes. For me, it’s my studio broom cupboard, and I’m very proud to say it now even has an ‘On Air’ sign that lights up above the door! – but one of the little known facts about you is that you’re a dab hand at this. You were working from home well before the rest of us – weren’t you – for about a decade?

Sarah Coles: Yes – although I have to say – despite being self-employed for about half my career so far, I hated it. I think it was the uncertainty, and that constant need to sell my work – it was just exhausting – so I don’t think I was giving much up when I started to work for 'the man' again.

Susannah Streeter: Yeah – still, for an awful lot of people, it’s the dream.

Our research shows that 38% of people would like to work for themselves, but only 36% of people have written it off – and I don’t think the appeal is just about being able to put a wash on during a break, or wearing PJs on the bottom half of zoom calls. Many people I speak to who’ve gone self-employed say it’s about the freedom of being your own boss – and flexibility, of course.

Sarah Coles: It’s certainly a change of lifestyle, and there’s an awful lot to think about when it comes to your finances when you work for yourself. So, that’s what we’re talking about today – in an episode we’re calling ‘Self-worth.’

Susannah Streeter: We’ll be speaking to Helen Morrissey – our Head of Retirement Analysis – about a piece of research we’ve done with Oxford Economics, looking at the finances of people who work for themselves.

Sarah Coles: We’ll also be speaking to Andrew Chamberlain – he’s Director of Policy at the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed – about the challenges and rewards of working for yourself. So, Andrew – is my experience unusual? Do most people just love working for themselves?

Andrew Chamberlain: Most people do – yes, Sarah. There are some challenges, but when you talk to people they love the freedom, the flexibility and the not having a boss. That's what they love about it.

Susannah Streeter: We look forward to finding out more later, Andrew. We’re also gonna chat to Sophie Lund-Yates – our Lead Equity Analyst – about some of the companies self-employed people might want to consider when it comes to investment – and to Emma Wall – our Head of Investment Research and Analysis – who’s been exploring this from a funds perspective – but, first, we should touch a little on what’s happening with the wider world – because we’ve had the latest jobs data out, and a snapshot of what’s happening in the economy.

Wage growth still appears to be stubbornly hot in Britain – and the temperature isn’t coming down much. Annual growth and regular pay remains at the scorching level of 7.8%. However, the unemployment rate has risen 0.5 percentage points to 4.3%, and the number of vacancies has retreated – finally dropping below the psychologically important one million mark.

That’s down from a record high of 1.3m reached in the three months to May 2022. It does show the fight for labour is easing, which may help relieve wage pressure further down the line – and this strong wage growth has been concerning the Bank of England due to worries higher salaries could keep fuelling inflation – because they may prompt more firms to pass on increases in pay through higher prices.

Sarah Coles: Yes – and the record numbers of sick people still absent from the labour force continues to be a worry because it narrows down the pool of available workers. That’s a situation which isn’t set to ease significantly, given the long waiting list for treatment.

Bank of England policy makers will keep a close watch on all these indicators, but the Governor – Andrew Bailey – did indicate that we could be close to the end of the interest rate hiking cycle, as he’s hopeful that inflation will come down significantly by the end of the year.

One thing to note is that the fall in employment in the most recent set of figures was driven by a drop in full-time self-employment.

Susannah Streeter: There has been a lot of uncertainty around quite a challenging time to be working for yourself.

Sarah Coles: Yes – but the appeal of being self-employed endures. So, our survey showed that men were particularly likely to want to work for themselves – with just under half of them saying it was part of their plans – compared to under a third of women. It’s also common amongst younger people because 58% of those who are aged 18 to 34 want to work for themselves at some stage.

The main attractions – according to IPSE – are flexibility, followed by the ability to be in control of your own work – although I just ended up working all hours – which is probably where I went wrong.

Susannah Streeter: Sounds like it might have been the case, Sarah. There are the major personal benefits to working for yourself – it’s also a big contributor to the UK economy – with IPSE figures showing solo freelancers contributed £278bn to the economy last year.

However, it does come with some downsides.

Sarah Coles: Yes – and there’s less security around your work. There’s also the chance you might be paid less. Now, there’s obviously huge differences between various forms of freelance work – and all sorts of reasons why self-employed income varies dramatically – from the industry you’re in to the hours you work – but, when you look at the most common salaries in the financial year ending 2016 – for employed people, it centred around £400 – and, for self-employed people, it was around £240 a week.

Plus, there are long-term implications too around the preparations self-employed people make for retirement.

Susannah Streeter: This was an area we wanted to explore through our Barometer work – so this feels like a good time to bring in Helen Morrissey to tell us a bit about what we found in the report. Hi, Helen.

Helen Morrissey: Hi – this is a really in-depth and interesting report on the retirement prospects of the self-employed. Pension saving for the self-employed has declined over the years for several reasons. For a start, the self-employed aren’t part of auto-enrolment, so won’t be enrolled into a pension. They also won’t benefit from an employer contribution to their pension because they don’t have an employer. Both of these factors mean that they are likely to end up with significantly less in their pensions than their employee counterparts. Added to this, uncertain cash and workflow means that many self-employed people discount pensions because they don’t want to lock up money until the age of 55, as they might need it to supplement their income before then. All of this added up, means that – according to the HL Savings and Resilience Barometer – only 23% of self-employed households, overall, are on track for a moderate retirement income. This compares to 46% of employed households.

Susannah Streeter: There’s clearly some significant challenges there. What can be done to help build up their long-term resilience?

Helen Morrissey: So, what we’ve found is Lifetime ISAs could be of real benefit to members of this group. Just to recap – with a Lifetime ISA, savings of up to £4000 per year attract a 25% bonus from the Government – so it works in a similar way to basic rate tax relief on a pension. If you don’t benefit from an employer pension contribution, then it’s a good option – and, if money gets tight, then you can access your LISA funds albeit subject to a 25% penalty.

I will add that Lifetime ISAs are particularly useful for basic rate tax payers. If you’re a higher rate tax payer – and pay into a pension – then you will get 40% – or even 45% tax relief on your contribution – so that does work out a better deal – especially if you end up paying basic rate tax in retirement. Tax rules can change, and any benefits depend on the individual and their circumstances.

Sarah Coles: But Lifetimes ISAs do have their challenges, don’t they?

Helen Morrissey: Yes, they do – and, as it currently stands, you can only open one if you’re under the age of 40 – so that has excluded a lot of self-employed people. In addition, the 25% penalty for early access not only takes away the Government bonus, but some of your hard-earned savings too. As part of this report, we are calling on Government to address these challenges.

First of all, we want to see Government allowing people to open an account and receive bonuses on LISA contributions up until the age of 55. We would also like to see the penalty on unauthorised withdrawals reduced to 20% for self-employed people. This means that, if they really have to access their LISA savings, then they’ll lose the bonus but none of their own money.

Sarah Coles: That sounds great, but how much of an impact would such changes have?

Helen Morrissey: We estimate expanding access to LISA for households aged between 40 and 55 – could include an extra 680,000 households with a self-employed worker who pays the basic rate of tax.

In addition to this, a reduction of the penalty could benefit 540,000 households under the age of 40 with a self-employed worker who pays a basic rate of tax.

This all adds up to a significant amount of people who may not feel like a pension that best suits their needs, but they still want to make some retirement planning.

Sarah Coles: That sounds really interesting – but, with the cost of living crisis continuing to bite down so hard, do self-employed people actually have the money to put away?

Helen Morrissey: Times have been tough, financially, but the Barometer findings show that self-employed people have been able to build up some cash savings. Some 62% of self-employed households have adequate liquid assets set aside. We advocate keeping three to six months of essential expenses in an easy access savings account – but, over and above this, there is headroom for self-employed people to boost their long-term resilience through a LISA, if the rules will permit it.

I want to take this opportunity to introduce our next guest today. So – as I said earlier – Andrew Chamberlain – Director of Policy at IPSE. Welcome, Andrew, and can you give us a bit of a brief overview of what IPSE is?

Andrew Chamberlain: Hi – thanks very much for having me on your podcast. IPSE – we are the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed. We are a trade association and a membership organisation.

We exist for our members, and we are, effectively, run by our members – our members make up our board – and we’re the only trade association which is exclusively dedicated to self-employed people in the UK – and, finally, we’re a ‘Not-for-profit’ as well. So, we are really run for our members – and what we’re trying to do is raise the profile of self-employment, and persuade the Government, in particular, to make sure that self-employment can be an aspirational and sustainable career choice.

Helen Morrissey: Thanks, Andrew – so what do you think are the key challenges that you’re seeing from your membership when it comes to saving for retirement?

Andrew Chamberlain: We do various bits of research around this, and everything that you’ve said so far is quite right. There is a big problem with self-employed people and saving for retirement.

Research that we did most recently – which is just last year – revealed that 15% of our survey sample were not saving into a pension at all, and a further 30% did have a pension, but they were not currently paying into it. I think quite a bit of those people may have had an employed role before – where they had a pension set up for them – but, since going self-employed, they haven’t been paying into it – and, when you ask people, ‘Why aren’t they paying into it?’ the top answers that you get are, ‘There are other financial priorities for them.’

So, basically, they have to keep liquidity in their business because they don’t know when they’re gonna get paid next. ‘The affordability of it’ – I think that’s the cost of living crisis really coming in there – into that answer – and many others do talk about, specifically, that they have stopped paying into their pension since becoming self-employed. It does seem that there’s a real issue with that self-employed status and paying into a pension.

Helen Morrissey: Thanks – are there any particular misconceptions that you hear – on pensions and retirement saving among self-employed people – that you think needs to be addressed?

Andrew Chamberlain: I don’t know if they’re necessarily misconceptions – I think the thing that we need to address is that, first of all – I would say – pensions aren’t the only option – and I’m glad that we’re talking today a bit about the Lifetime ISA, ‘cause I do think that, potentially – with some of the tweaks that you’ve been talking about – that could become quite a good alternative option.

Pensions may not be that suitable for self-employed people. They work well for employees – and, particularly, since auto-enrolment’s come in – of course, many more employees now have a pension – and, very often, there’s a contribution being made by their employer – well, that doesn’t exist for self-employed people.

I think that’s one of the messages that we need to get out there – is that it’s not all about pensions – there might be other avenues of saving that could be just as good, and maybe more attractive to self-employed people.

Helen Morrissey: Okay – was there anything in the report that surprised you?

Andrew Chamberlain: Quite a few things – there’s a few really great stats in the report, and one of the ones that really struck me was that just 15% of basic rate tax payers – who are under 39 – are on-track to have sufficient savings for their retirement – and that figure of 15% only gets a little bit better – 22% – when you look at 40 to 55-year-olds.

Only 15% are on track to have sufficient savings, which means that 85% do not. There is no doubt there is a real crisis forming here – and just one other thing I might say about it is that, over the last 20 years, self-employment has risen quite consistently.

It did dip down during the pandemic, but it’s stabilised now, and we’ve actually seen four quarters of year-on-year growth for the first time in a while. So, it looks like it might be starting to go back up again. It seems as if this way of working is gonna be more and more popular, and the more people that are self-employed – that means that this problem gets bigger and bigger as a share of our society, overall.

It’s a really important issue that we think the Government needs to address, and we’re very pleased that Hargreaves Lansdown have released this report and made the recommendations which we support.

Helen Morrissey: And so, you think that the Lifetime ISA could have an impact on the self-employed’s retirement preparation and prospects?

Andrew Chamberlain: I think that the Lifetime ISA could be quite an attractive option for self-employed people. The thing with pensions – that the self-employed don’t like – is that, once that money’s put away, they really can’t get at it at all. With a Lifetime ISA, you can get at it, but you do get quite badly punished for doing so.

If you follow the Hargreaves Lansdown recommendations, you will lose a bonus if you access the money early, and also the age limit is absolutely key.

Another surprising thing in the report – which it highlighted – was that, because the age limit, currently, is 40 years old… So, basically, if you’re 40, you can’t open a Lifetime ISA – you have to be younger than that. This report recommends making that 55 – which we agree with. At the 40 years old age limit, that actually excludes about 70% of self-employed people. It’s really not working at all for self-employed people at the moment but, with a few tweaks, I think it really could work for them, and it could form just one part of the solution to this big problem around ‘Saving for later life’ for self-employed people.

Helen Morrissey: There’s some really valuable insights there, and I wanted to thank you so much for your time today, Andrew – back to you, Sarah and Susannah.

Susannah Streeter: Thanks very much, Helen and Andrew – some real challenges for self-employed people, there – and, of course, working for yourself also throws up some pretty interesting questions about investing.

Let’s talk, now, to Sophie Lund-Yates. Sophie – you have been taking a look at some stocks self-employed people might want to look at – who’s up first, and why?

Sophie Lund-Yates: Hi, Susannah – yes, I have indeed. Self-employed people may need their pension to work harder for them over their working life. Depending on your situation – if you’re self-employed, you’re likely not going to be putting as much away each month into your pension – at least, partly, because you won’t be getting employer contributions. So, with that in mind, it’s really important to remember the diversification rule. So, that’s not being overly exposed to one type of asset, region, or sector. This helps spread your risk and can smooth out the effects of ups and downs.

It’s really important to look at diversification as a whole when constructing your portfolio, but a different type of diversification can be found through investing in some companies – which can see their revenue streams reliant on multiple different areas. This is, obviously, a bit different to other stocks which might only be zoomed in on one geographic area or product type.

One such company is Amazon. So, Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world – most of our listeners will have heard of this tech giant! It’s core business is, of course, the retail delivery side of things – that many of us, no doubt, use at least semi-regularly – but the sheer scope of this business can’t be understated. There’s North America – which is the biggest region for Amazon – where net sales last quarter were a massive $82.5bn – but there’s also international – which is the other countries around the world that can get their hands on Amazon deliveries – and net sales there came in at $22.1bn – so not exactly small-fry.

Susannah Streeter: And they’re diverse in another sense too, aren’t they?

Sophie Lund-Yates: Amazon has a very diverse revenue stream – not only geographically, but with the sectors it’s exposed to. So, retail – as we’ve covered – is a big one – and there are actually some challenges when you look at consumer resilience – and how demand might track as incomes come under pressure – but there’s also Amazon Web Services – AWS – which is the enormous Cloud business. So, this umbrella also encompasses Amazon’s connection to the Artificial Intelligence world, and how it can support AI growth – because of the tech and computing power it can provide to companies ramping up their own AI efforts.

Amazon’s valuation has had a strong year to date – partly reflecting the excitement around AWS – but I just say that, looking short-term, there could be some bumps, purely depending on how the consumer landscape pans out in the important retail business.

Sarah Coles: Thanks, Sophie – so who else have you looked at?

Sophie Lund-Yates: No other than a paper packaging giant! Now, bear with me – I know it doesn’t sound the most interesting, but it’s actually pretty cool, if you ask me! – but I would say that. DS Smith is a London-listed packaging specialist – and it’s, potentially, an option for some exposure to a broad area of Europe. So, last year, the group’s revenue was pretty much the same in Northern and Southern Europe – at about $3.1bn a piece – and then, Eastern Europe and North America made up the rest with £1.3bn, and £664m each. That gives you an idea of where DS Smith’s fortunes actually lie – but, looking beyond that, the group’s in a good position, in my opinion.

The group’s a key supplier to e-commerce groups, providing the cardboard boxes that are a familiar sight outside houses up and down the country. Amazon’s actually a core customer. DS Smith also sells its boxes to consumer goods and food groups – these include many of the ‘Shelf-ready’ cardboard boxes you’ll find in the supermarkets. Supplying consumer goods is something that helps make it more resilient – no matter what’s going on, economically, people will still need to do the weekly food shop.

Demand for these segments is benefitting from structural growth drivers too – so consumers are keen to shift away from plastic packaging, and a reliance on e-commerce is a trend that’s here to stay.

Sarah Coles: What else d’you think is worth pointing out about DS Smith?

Sophie Lund-Yates: Input costs are on the rise – and, to cope, DS Smith is increasing its own packaging prices while deploying contracts to protect against unfavourable gas prices. It’s working – and price hikes have been feeding through to the bottom line.

Volumes have also been a challenge – and remain on my radar – but trends should improve over the year. Investors should keep in mind that – a bit like Amazon – any major knocks to consumer confidence could cause some ups and downs.

Sarah Coles: Thanks, Sophie – I will never look at my parcels the same way again! So, what’s the last company you’ve looked at this week?

Sophie Lund-Yates: Last up – I’ve been looking at one of the most valuable brands on the planet, and that’s Caterpillar. Caterpillar is a builder and supplier of heavy-duty machinery used in everything from infrastructure projects to mining, and energy, and transportation projects. So, that’s providing the kit that helps companies get precious metals out the ground – or green hydrogen generators that can help customers meet their climate-related objectives. I haven’t even scratched the surface there but, hopefully, it gives an idea of the kind of scope and size of what Caterpillar’s products are.

Running across all three segments is the services offering – where Caterpillar offers repairs and upgrades through its products’ lifecycles. This helps support revenue streams and is an offering that’s gone from strength to strength.

Sarah Coles: How are the financials shaping up?

Sophie Lund-Yates: Analysts have significantly increased their estimates for free cashflow in recent months – a testament to strong performance over the half. It’s now expected around $8.2bn for the year, which helps to ease pressures that the heavy debt load brings. As a mature business, it could stomach a higher debt load, and levels relative to profits have been steady over time.

One of the main strengths here is that demand for Caterpillar’s goods and services should be robust. It straddles critical industries as well as being able to call governments ‘Core customers.’ There are high barriers to entry, which basically means it’s very hard for competitors to take any market share.

One core risk – and at the risk of repeating myself! – is that an unexpectedly bad economic downturn would probably send some jitters through the valuation.

Sarah Coles: Thanks, Sophie – there’s some really interesting options there.

It’s also worth exploring this from a funds perspective. So, let’s bring in Emma Wall, who’s been talking to Remi Olu-Pitan from Schroder’s.

Emma Wall: Hi, Remi.

Remi Olu-Pitan: Hello, Emma.

Emma Wall: How are you?

Remi Olu-Pitan: I’m very well, thank you.

Emma Wall: Thanks very much for joining me today. We’re going to talk about ‘The perfect portfolio’ – if it exists! – and it’s one that should have lots of different asset classes in order to deliver the best risk adjusted return – and the fund that you co-manage is a multi-asset fund – so, perhaps, we could kick off by talking about the power of asset allocation.

Remi Olu-Pitan: A lot has changed when it comes to the investment landscape. The first thing is that cash exists – and cash is investable – and cash is yielding – and that means, as an investor, we need to think about how we can generate an attractive return above cash – because, the problem with cash – although it’s risk-free – it’s not inflation-free. There are so many assets available to us, but we can’t own all of them at the same time – because they behave differently.

Right now, we actually think that equities are a very attractive asset over the medium-term. Over the next couple of months, it will be volatile – but, if you are aiming to generate an attractive return above cash and inflation, this has to be in your portfolio. Even within equities, the unloved value and commodity sectors are what we should be adding to now.

Emma Wall: That’s a really important point – and also just helps hammer home that one should be thinking about the long-term when you’re investing. I know it’s difficult at the moment for everybody. Households are being squeezed – the cost of living crisis. Inflation – although it looks like it’s coming down – remains stubbornly high – but, if you’re thinking about reaching those long-term goals, you need to take a long-term view – and that’s where asset classes, such as equities, come in. How d’you think about the macro – the economy – the market – the risk of recession?

Remi Olu-Pitan: The most important thing is that long-term destination – because the macro – the risk – can be quite distracting – and it is a lot of noise – but, if you have that long-term destination in mind, you can really think about how you navigate the bumps along the road. So, right now, the key issue for us – from a macro point of view – is inflation isn’t coming down fast enough.

Central banks have to prioritise inflation – and, in order for them to achieve their inflation targets, they must actually hurt growth – and so, this is a difficult environment for investors because you know that, in order for inflation to come down, we need to sacrifice growth – and so, as investors, there is a need to be cautious and defensive.

But the problem – Emma – is that what we consider defensive is very risky! These assets – such as government bonds – don’t offer any inflation protection.

As investors, we’ve got to re-think ‘What is risky’ and, ‘What is defensive,’ because the risk has changed. The risk is no longer just buying bonds for yield – the risk is inflation protection. So, actually – within our portfolio – oddly enough, commodities – gold is now considered the better defensive asset than government bonds – so that’s a big shift.

Emma Wall: That said, you do have some bonds in the portfolio – don’t you – because, although you might be having higher conviction in those areas like equities and commodities, it’s really important to have balance.

Remi Olu-Pitan: Whilst we’ve reduced our exposure to fixed income compared to 10 years ago – because it’s a very different regime – we think that this decade is one where, on average, our exposure to bonds will be lower than history.

You’re absolutely right in that we still own bonds – for example, we do like high-quality corporate bonds. We think that a lot of companies have excess cash, and they’re able to weather the storm that we think is approaching. There are some government bonds that we like – critically, it’s in those sovereigns, where the current yield on offer is above inflation. At the moment, a lot of that is within the emerging market world – but, even in the developed market world, some sovereigns are able to pay to offer a yield that’s above inflation.

The US is finally there – there is still a case for fixed income – but we need to be careful. ‘Why do we own fixed income?’ It must be because there’s a high-quality yield that compensates us for inflation risk, and it must be because ‘The’ central bank of that sovereign has credibly fought inflation well.

Emma Wall: Finally, Remi – it’s a difficult question – where in the world are you seeing the best opportunities?

Remi Olu-Pitan: In terms of the long-term, there are two really interesting opportunities. We think the UK equity market is actually screaming as ‘Attractive.’ The reason being, it’s one of the most hated – and there have been a lot of questions marks with regards to the Bank of England and their credibility – but a lot of UK companies – particularly within the small and mid-cap sector – are trading at very attractive valuations.

There is a lot of hump in the road – particularly between now and the first quarter of next year – but, for long-term investors, there are opportunities to start edging into very cheap companies – and what we do like in the UK are some of the materials – some of the miners – and some of the energy companies.

The second market that has a positive consensus view is Japan. We think that Japanese equities have been unloved for many years, but the key thing about Japan, right now, is that you finally have good inflation – and companies within Japan are responding to it in a way that maximises shareholder returns.

There is something changing within Asia – I think we’re seeing a lot of portfolio rebalance – particularly long-term investors – away from areas like China, where there are political question marks – and it’s very difficult to assess value. We think that this favours Japan – but, within a diversified equity portfolio, it’s important to not ignore the US.

The US equity market has done very well, but only a subset of the US market has done well, and that is the technology companies. This AI scene, we think, is something that cannot be ignored. Investors – particularly long-term investors – should have exposure to these companies because they will change the world.

Emma Wall: Remi – thank you very much.

Remi Olu-Pitan: Thank you, Emma.

Sarah Coles: That was Emma Wall talking to Remi Olu-Pitan from Schroder’s on Friday 15 September – and, please, do bear in mind that these are the views of the Fund Manager, and are not individual stock recommendations.

Susannah Streeter: You’re listening to Switch Your Money On from Hargreaves Lansdown – and now it’s time for the stat of the week.

Sarah, we’ve talked about some of the challenges facing self-employed people. So, let’s end on a bit more of an upbeat note. IPSE did a study into how going freelance affected people, mentally. It found that it improved the mental wellbeing of 80% of people who went freelance, and it had a very positive effect on 48% of them.

So, it seems like you might be in the minority, Sarah!

Sarah Coles: Yes – and I did know that at the time! All my freelance friends were sharing stories of endless travel and daytime TV – and I was having to work from soft-play centres all weekend to keep the kids entertained while I met deadlines – so I did know I was doing it all wrong, even then.

Susannah Streeter: It makes your current work schedule look like a walk in the park. Despite our hideously early mornings, it is very nice to be in the broom cupboard recording this at a sensible time, rather than the crack of dawn!

Well, that’s all from us for now. My broadcast light is just about to go out – but, before we go, we do need to remind you that this was recorded on September 18th 2023, and all information was correct at the time of recording.

Sarah Coles: Nothing in this podcast is personal advice – you should seek advice if you’re not sure what’s right for you. Unlike the security offered by cash, investments rise and fall in value, so you could get back less than you invest.

Susannah Streeter: Yes – this is not advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any investment. No view is given on the present or future value – or price of any investment – and investors should form their own view on any proposed investment.

Sarah Coles: And this hasn’t been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research, and is considered a marketing communication.

Susannah Streeter: Non-independent research is not subject to FCA rules prohibiting dealing ahead of research. However, HL put controls in place - including dealing restrictions – physical and information barriers – to manage potential conflicts of interest presented by such dealing.

Sarah Coles: You can see our full non-independent research disclosure on our website for more information. All that’s left is for me to thank our guests – Andrew, Helen, Sophie, Emma, Remi, and our producer, Elizabeth Hotson.

Susannah Streeter: Thank you so much for listening. We’ll be back again soon – good-bye!