It would not be our natural instinct to recommend the life assurance bond route and following the announcement of proposed changes to UK taxation by Chancellor Alistair Darling, the tax advantages of holding one of these to a UK investor look somewhat less attractive at the end of 2007 than they did at the beginning.

The main reasons for going this route are pure ease of administration, and cost reduction if you are intending to be an actively trading investor. There are some tax benefits too but these are becoming more marginal in some countries whereas others make their use a shrewd move for high net worth individuals. A quarterly statement is prepared and sent out for you and you have but one company to deal with for everything. This can avoid a real paper chase. They also make sure that all dividends are collected on your behalf and in most cases will allow you to buy a new asset before the proceeds of the previously sold asset is available. This can be very useful. Temporarily held cash balances also attract decent rates of return.

As a company we shall continue to recommend these in the rare exception that one may be justified or useful for tax or administrative purposes and we shall continue to heavily discount these where we do. On large sums we are proud to say we have in the past saved our clients tens of thousands of Pounds or in some cases Euros over standard charged products used by our competitors.