We twenty-somethings are reputed to be lifestyle spenders with high disposable income, and low financial commitment. Generation Y lacks personal finance skills and more than 60% of young people don't plan financially. Combine that with a high spending lifestyle and the mounting pensions crisis - our financial future’s not looking too hot. Indeed in 2011, the average student is predicted to graduate around £21k in the red (Push.co.uk) – not the best start in adult life.

The FSA’s launched its "What About Money" website, banks such as Nat West, and Barclays are targeting young people through education and social media initiatives. All steps in the right direction, but, if I wasn’t working in FS, could you really engage me in a conversation about pensions when I could be planning my next night out? That is the challenge ahead.

It's an unpleasant reality but with fewer and fewer people of working age supporting each pensioner, without fundamental reform, our pension system simply won't cope. We're going to have to work later in life, hence this week's news that the UK Government will abolish the mandatory retirement age from 2011. No longer will employers be allowed to dismiss staff just because they’ve reached the age of 65.

It's been greeted with concern from British industry regarding possible cost to business and the impact on young people's job opportunities. But the new policy is based on solid evidence and has considered these issues.

We conducted the international element of the review that guided the legislation, looking abroad to examine the impact of different approaches to the problem. We can learn from several countries, like Australia and New Zealand, which banned mandatory retirement and introduced policies that helped people work longer; gave opportunities to make a phased transition into retirement and worked to counter ageist stereotypes. This increased the proportion of older people in work with no evidence of significant cost implications for employers, or jobs being taken away from young people.

A good reminder that we should look beyond our own borders for evidence to support policy or business decisions!

Or so said Brendan Behan. But how true is this oft-cited, abridged remark?

Let me explain where I'm coming from. For my sins, I'm a Harlequins rugby fan. LV=, a long-term client of Consensus, is a key sponsor of Quins, a fact that gives me a bit of a buzz in a sad, anorakky kind of way.

But what did LV= make of the Bloodgate scandal of summer 2009, which tarnished not only the Quins name but that of rugby itself?

Now financial brands and rugby have gone hand-in-hand for many years of course - Zurich and HSBC with the British and Irish Lions, Amlin the 2nd tier European club rugby tournament and so on and on.

It's a fact of life that sometimes events out there in the world work in favour of the sponsor, sometimes they work against. As Billy Bragg once said 'You've got to take the crunchy with the smooth.

The important question here is does it matter and just maybe Mr Behan was right. I'm well versed in testing the effect of this sort of publicity on brand strength and character, but does it get to the bottom of it?

I still love Quins after all, and am almost as fond of LV=. I mean, they are a client after all.

Hardly the type of humour we associate with Vicky Pollard or Emily Howard and Florence from Little Britain. But it is still the thought that strikes me every time I see the 'ladies' advertising Nationwide on TV or catch a picture of the equally lady-like Vicky in a branch window.

To me, what Nationwide is trying to do here sums up the quandary faced by retail ‘banking’ in recession-hit Britain today. Quite understandably it is making the most of being that rarest of beasts - a mutual building society with true national clout - and in doing so is keeping its distance from the tainted 'bank' tag.

Yet can Nationwide risk being seen as too different? There is still great equity in the old-fashioned values of trust and honesty and of having a personal relationship with your bank - or building society for that matter - through the branch on your high street. Look at Metrobank - as much as they hope to break many of the traditional banking taboos, branches and personal contact will still be at the heart of their offer. When Tesco Bank fully wades into the murky waters of current accounts, it is likely they will follow suit in their own unique way with more branches rolled out in-store.

It's a fine balance to achieve – be different, but actually not that different at all.

A good friend of mine - in fact a retired Doctor of Psychology who frankly should know better - is a self-confessed Aleksandr the Meerkat groupee. So when I showed her my Simples iPhone app, complete with Sergei Bloopers, she was suitably impressed.

(If you must know I too am a big fan of the Aleksandr app, just as I am of the Barclaycard Waterslide game, a highly successful must-have accessory for us financial services-savvy iPhone geeks. The Ask Churchill app is on my wish-list).

Now we're all aware of the growing influence of social media on our lives - and we know that brands are devoting more and more resource to scouring sites to intercept negative virtual conversations - but venturing into the world of apps takes us into a different area altogether.

At a Financial Services Forum event recently I listened to an industry guru tell us that within 3 to 5 years, 2 in every 3 people in the audience would be regular mobile bankers. Admittedly the audience at such an event is a certain 'type' of person, but it still made me appreciate all the more the reach and power of the little gadget on which I'm typing this very blog.

What are we going to be doing next do you think? Trying to prevent a parachuting Churchill from landing in the porcupine farm? Will the Go Compare Guy spin-off his Facebook page on to a karting track to race alongside a resurgent Howard from Halifax??

We don't know of course, though what I do know is how effectively this new marketing ploy is keeping these brands in the palm of my hand and at the front of my mind.

The words yelled at me by my 4 year old daughter last weekend when she wasn't allowed an unfeasibly large slice of chocolate cake right before tea. Tempted as I was to yell back with the cheap shot "well, life isn't fair!", it got me thinking.

'Fair' is a very subjective word to bandy around, it means different things to all of us. So to apply it to the regulated world of financial services a la TCF was always going to be tricky. Ok there's the 6 outcomes that underpin it, but I wasn't surprised to see the announcement by the FSA last week that TCF had not been a staggering success so far. Now, they seem to have focused in on the 1 outcome that in my opinion is at the heart of it all - making products that are fit for purpose.

If the industry can get fully behind this then maybe there'll be no more toys thrown out of prams and we can all have our cake and eat it.

Late last year, to celebrate the 50th wave of our Investment Funds Syndicate, we conducted a piece of qual research among some of the most revered thinkers in the funds industry. Our brief was simple - 'what's going to happen now then'?

From such a simple brief we dug deep into some of the most critical issues facing the industry today - what will be the fate of advisors when the full impact of the RDR is felt? Will fund managers start to listen to the ones with the money - the investors!? What about platforms - is the era of the self-directed investor truly dawning?

I won't go into the answers here - these can be found here. But, I will say that the richness of insight gained from this research was testament to the openness of the brief. We had room to roam, and so did our respondents. For more years than I can remember I've listened to clients saying they want MR agencies to get closer to their business - being open and not prescriptive, allows us to do this, allows us to understand you and the decisions you need to take.

Brevity is the soul of wit they say. I think it's also the soul of a good, er, brief.