January is known to be one of the months where most people are likely to experience the ‘blues’, or some kind of low feelings. In the UK by now we have already had to cope with over three months of dark mornings and evenings, cold, grey, and wet weather. That doesn’t tend to help our mental wellbeing.

The Chartered Insurance Institute is announcing the appointment of new Chairs to two of its specialist communities, the Society of Insurance Broking (SIB) and Society of Claims Professionals (SOCP). Laura Hancock, director of YuTree Insurance, replaces, Kevin Hancock, also of YuTree, as the Chair of SIB, while Ashton West OBE, non-executive director of Weightmans LLP and director of Fidu Consultancy, succeeds Sue McCall of MS Amlin as Chair of SOCP. Chair appointments are made on a biennial basis and come following the natural completion of the cycles of their predecessors.  

The Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) is piloting a new form of assessment for the R06 Financial Planning Practice unit.

In our latest Five minutes with...feature, we catch up with Suzi Lane, Chartered Financial Planner at Bespoke-Advice Limited.