the times | Saturday December 4 2021 65
Money
Post Office card deadline
A
bout 13,000 people who get
money from the taxman
through Post Office cards have
been given more time to provide alter-
native bank details but if they don’t do it
by April their payments will be sus-
pended.
People who don’t have bank accounts
use the cards to withdraw government
payments such as child benefit, guardi-
an’s allowance and tax credits over the
counter at post offices. The taxman had
been due to phase out the accounts by
this month but has extended the dead-
line. It said last month that 24,000
people still used the cards to receive
benefits. Since then about 11,000
people have provided their bank details
and it is encouraging the remaining
13,000 to do the same.
People who get child benefit or
guardian’s allowance can provide new
bank, building society or credit union
details online or call 0300 200 3100.
Those who get tax credits must ring
0345 300 3900 to update their details.
The Department for Work and Pen-
sions also uses the accounts to make
benefit payments, including universal
credit, jobseeker’s allowance and the
state pension. It was meant to stop pay-
ments to them last month, but has ex-
tended the deadline by a year.
Those who receive DWP payments
and who do not have an alternative
bank account will be moved to a new
service that will send their money
through digital vouchers and give them
a new card so they can withdraw cash
through PayPoint in a shop or over a
Post Office counter.
George NixonWhy you will get a nudge in the right direction before you spend all your pension
Savers dipping into their
pensions will be nudged
towards a free advice
service to help them avoid
running out of money
in retirement.
Pension companies will
have to explain why savers
should take advice from the
government service
Pension Wise, which is
funded by the financial
industry, and offer to book
an appointment for them.
The changes, which were
announced this week and
will kick in from June, come
amid concerns that peopleare taking their pension
cash too early. You can get
access to your pension pot
from 55 and take 25 per
cent of it tax-free. This age
will rise to 57 for most
people in April 2028 to
reflect higher life
expectancies.
The Financial Conduct
Authority, the City
regulator, said:
“Pension Wise
offers free,
impartial
guidance about
pension
options.” It isopen to anyone over 50
with a defined contribution
pension, where the amount
you get in retirement
depends on the amount
contributed and the
performance of your
investments. Go to
moneyhelper.org.uk or
call 0800 1383944.
Anyone who has
a more lucrative
defined benefit
pension, which
guarantees
an income
for life, is
advised toseek advice from their
pension provider.
Jon Greer from the
advice firm Quilter said
many savers, especially
those with smaller pots,
don’t feel they need
guidance. “Our experience
is that customers looking to
access their pension money
usually already have a set
idea about the action they
want to take. Arguably the
nudge should happen a lot
earlier, given people do a
lot of research before they
start taking their money.”
Kate Palmerthat doesn’t mean
that they won’t. “It
probably makes other
parts of their business
more important.”
Alibaba’s marketplace
business is likely to get
lower returns, placing more
importance on its cloud computing
division, for instance. But Chinese
consumers who had previously pre-
ferred western branded products are
changing and the younger generation
is increasingly seeing domestic
Chinese brands as higher quality.
Slater is a considered, softly spoken
Welshman. He answers every question
carefully, while nursing a mug bearing
the name of Nio, the Chinese electric-
car maker — ironic given that Scottish
Mortgage is famous for being an early
backer of Tesla. Slater owns a Tesla
Model 3, but had cycled in from his
home in the hills 20 minutes outside the
city for our meeting. He joined the
management team in 2009, becoming
joint manager five years later.
What has Slater learnt from Ander-
son? “Most things,” he said with a laugh,
then revealed that there were two main
things: “an unwillingness to be distract-
ed by the things that don’t matter and a
passion and enthusiasm for supporting
companies”. Fund management isn’t
about trading bits of paper, “it’s about
being a serious, thoughtful long-term
owner of companies”, he said.
The second is a different way of look-
ing at growth beyond Warren Buffett’s
“economic moats” — a company’s abil-
ity to maintain an advantage over its
competitors. “James told me to look for
more than that, to assume risk, because
in the world that we live in today the
pay-offs to that risk can be enormous,”
Slater said.
While the pair share an investment
philosophy, they come at things from
different viewpoints. Anderson read
history at the University of Oxford,
Slater computer science with mathe-
matics at the University of Edinburgh.
They don’t always agree on the in-
vestment case for companies. They do,
however, back each other’s optimism.
“The way we’ve operated is that we
back each other’s enthusiasms
because you will make so much
more if that person is right than
you will lose if they’re wrong,”
Slater said.
Lawrence Burns, who joined
Baillie Gifford in 2009, was
appointed deputy manager for
Scottish Mortgage this year.
Burns has co-managed the
firm’s international concen-
trated growth strategy alongside
Anderson since 2017.
Slater said that Burns fits into
the Scottish Mortgage way
of thinking. His inter-
national focus comple-
ments Slater’s US equi-
ty background and he
brings deep relation-
ships with companies
such as Argentina’s
ecommerce firm Mer-
cado Libre and Ger-
many’s food service
Delivery Hero.
The pair have also
worked together when invest-
ing in private companies such as
Sweden’s music streaming service
Spotify. Slater said that Burns will pro-
vide continuity of approach. “It’s not
bringing in a new direction,” he said.
“You can only ever lose 100 per cent”
is a mantra you hear Baillie Gifford
fund managers utter a lot. And when
you pick a winner, like Tesla, Amazon
or Alibaba, the returns can be almost
unlimited. That’s why Slater won’t be
worrying too much about companies
flopping. “We don’t think giving voice
to pessimism is a particularly helpful
thing to do in a world of uncapped
gains,” he said.that doesn’t mean
They d
vestment
however,
“The w
back
becau
mor
you
SlB
a
S
B
fir
tra
And
S2.5%
of Scottish
Mortgage Trust is
invested in the
retailer Amazon£1.4bn
value of Scottish
Mortgage’s holding
in the electric-car
maker Tesla