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Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as the GfK consumer confidence index hit decade lows

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9.40am BST
Britain’s financial watchdog has launched 30 enforcement investigations into firms that have given bad advice to customers about transferring out of their defined benefit pension schemes, my colleague Mark Sweney writes.
The Financial Conduct Authority has banned financial advisers from getting paid only when a customer transfers a pension, known as contingent charging, which creates a bias for advisers to recommend a transfer.
The proportion of customers who have been advised to transfer out of their defined benefit pension is unacceptably high.
While much of the advice we looked at was suitable, we are still finding too many cases in which transfers were not in the customer’s best interests.
Related: FCA investigates 30 firms over pension transfer advice
9.19am BST
BBC economics editor Faisal Islam details the news that Richard Hughs will be taking over from Robert Chote as the head of the Office for Budget Responsibility.
Chancellor just announced that economist Richard Hughes @rjdhughes , former IMF official, top Treasury fiscal adviser and author of below interesting coronavirus report at @resfoundation will take over from Robert Chote as Chair of OBR, independent tax and spend numbers watchdog https://t.co/n0uYWQNzFc Continue reading...