Good news for Isa diversification

⬤ Increased competition in the Isa market is good news for savers who use their tax allowances to invest directly in overseas shares. Doing so makes sense from the perspective of diversifying your portfolio, but Isa investors face an annoying hurdle to investing abroad: the Isa rules don’t allow you to hold cash in a foreign currency, so each time you buy or sell overseas shares within your Isa, you have to pay foreign exchange (FX) charges as well as dealing fees. These FX fees can be exorbitant as they are one of the few areas where it’s still easy for platforms to hide costs. But last month’s entrance of Interactive Brokers into the Isa market could help: it offers some of the cheapest foreign exchange charges available to private investors at just 0.03% per trade.

⬤ Are you on target to secure the full state pension when you retire? Fewer than half of pensioners currently get the maximum amount, according to government figures, so it is worth checking. You can review your progress by logging into the gov.uk/check-state-pension service. If you’re set to come up short, making additional National Insurance contributions on a voluntary basis could be a good idea. You need 35 years’ worth of full contributions to get the maximum state pension.

⬤ The value of pension fund savings invested by providers who have made credible “net zero” commitments to reduce carbon emissions and tackle climate change has now exceeded £1trn, according to the campaign group Make My Money Matter, set up by Comic Relief founder Richard Curtis. The group is calling on employerrun pension schemes to sell holdings in sectors with a poor record on sustainability.