Armen Turikov

A freelancer is a self-employed person who offers services, often working on several jobs for multiple clients at one time.

Freelancers should send invoices to their customers to keep thorough records of their sales. Download free, customisable invoice templates for Word and Excel.

Freelancers usually earn money on a per-job basis, charging hourly or daily rates for their work. Freelance work is usually short-term.

While a freelancer is not officially employed by another company, they can be subcontracted by other businesses. It’s common for freelancers to work on several different jobs or projects at once, but some freelance contracts may restrict who else the freelancer can work for until they complete the project.

Some of the most common freelance jobs are within creative industries such as graphic design, copywriting, website development or photography. However, freelancers can work in almost any service-based industry, such as translation, consulting or catering.

Like sole traders, a freelancer fits under the broad term ‘self-employed’, but while a sole trader is a specific businesses structure registered with HMRC, the term ‘freelancer’ doesn’tt refer to any specific legal status. Instead, it refers to the type of work carried out.

As such, not all sole traders fit the definition of a freelancer, and freelancers are not always sole traders. Although the sole trader business structure is the most common structure for freelancers, freelancers may also choose to register as a limited company or partnership instead.

When you first start working for yourself, you’ll initially be classified as a sole trader. As a sole trader, you’ll need to register with HMRC to make sure that you pay the correct Income Tax and National Insurance.

You may also need to register for:

CIS if you’re working as a contractor or subcontractor in the construction industry;

VAT if you have an annual turnover of more than £85,000.

If you register as a partnership or limited company, you’ll have some additional responsibilities, such as choosing and registering a company name.

If you’re thinking about becoming a freelancer, it's important to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of freelance work.

Some of the advantages of being a freelancer include:

Flexible work schedule: you can choose which hours to work and can set your own schedule to fit around other commitments.

Choice and variety: whereas employees are often told which clients to work for, as a freelancer, you can pick your projects and are less confined to specific markets or sectors.

More control: you can set your own goals and will have more say in the direction of your business.

On the other hand, there are several disadvantages to consider, including:

Less stability: because freelance work depends on reaching enough clients, many freelancers have less financial stability and less guarantee of future work than employees

Fewer benefits: many companies offer benefits for their employees, such as insurance or pension plans. Self-employed freelancers would be responsible for their own perks and benefits.

5 TOP FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Our world is becoming very tech-inclined with a growing reliance on technology and online resources. This, coupled with increased competition from fintech and regtech firms whose business model revolves around a variety of new technologies has forced traditional financial institutions to invest in digital technologies to remake processes and become more efficient.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) AND BLOCKCHAIN

AI and Blockchain continue to expand the frontiers of technology, enabling companies to solve even harder problems and disrupt the financial services landscape with huge competitive advantages. AI, for one, is taking the financial services industry by storm.

Several financial services firms now rely on artificial intelligence to cut cost, save time, and add value. For instance, wealth management institutions now use robo-advisors to analyze and understand client investment, spending, and general behavior regarding money management so they can customize the advice offered to customers.

Similarly, the blockchain, the technology which runs cryptocurrencies, continues to power innovation in the financial services sector. It offers an opportunity to speed up and simplify cross-border payments, ensure greater trade accuracy, improve online identify management, and ensure transparency in financial operations.

Through smart contracts, transactions and agreements are executed automatically once the conditions coded in them are satisfied. This help eliminates the need for an intermediary and leads to a reduction in cost.

DIGITAL-ONLY BANKS INFLUENCE IN THE FINANCIAL WORLD CONTINUES TO GROW

Digital-only banks and fintech companies are threatening to replace traditional banks as the focal point of the banking experience. As technological advancements continue to expand and consumers become more comfortable using the internet, their expectations for instant and straightforward digital interactions will continue to increase.

By their very nature, digital-only banks possess the tools necessary to offer consumers what they expect and prefer. Not operating from any physical location means they attract low transaction cost, which allows them to distribute resources better to provide customer experiences that are uniquely differentiated.

For instance, DBS Bank, a Marina Bay-based digital-only bank offers up to 7% interest rates on savings accounts, unlimited access to ATMs, zero balance requirements, etc., all of which can be difficult for legacy organizations to provide.

BIG DATA CONTINUES TO DRIVE MODERN BUSINESS OPERATIONS

Organizations continue to find new ways to leverage big data. This data now enables companies to create real competitive advantages by providing large amounts of information to assist with their research, marketing, etc. It is predicted that the Internet of Things will make big data even bigger by providing plenty of storage space as well as by offering the big data itself.

BANKS AND FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS EMBRACE CLOUD-BASED OFFERINGS

Cloud innovation has been a thing in the financial services industry for a while now. However, it wasn’t until recently that banks started to embrace it. The innovation was generally not well received by traditional banks due to security issues. Brick and Mortar institutions feared that entrusting data to cloud will make it more susceptible to hacks.

A conversion occurs when a visitor to your website completes a desired goal, such as filling out a form or making a purchase. The percentage of total visitors that convert is called your conversion rate. Depending on your site’s or business’s goals, conversion types might include:

Online sales

Leads

Email signups

Form completions

In order to track conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion, you need to make sure to use conversion tracking.Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is the process of improving your conversion rate. A/B testing or split testing is one of the techniques used to test and monitor the conversion performance of different landing pages or ads. It helps to identify which elements on your ads and pages optimize your online conversion rate. For example, you might test different headlines, buttons, calls to action, or images on your landing pages to see which variations lead to more conversions.

A franchise (or franchising) is a method of distributing products or services involving a franchisor, who establishes the brand’s trademark or trade name and a business system, and a franchisee, who pays a royalty and often an initial fee for the right to do business under the franchisor's name and system. Technically, the contract binding the two parties is the “franchise,” but that term more commonly refers to the actual business that the franchisee operates. The practice of creating and distributing the brand and franchise system is most often referred to as franchising.

There are two different types of franchising relationships. Business Format Franchising is the type most identifiable. In a business format franchise, the franchisor provides to the franchisee not just its trade name, products and services, but an entire system for operating the business. The franchisee generally receives site selection and development support, operating manuals, training, brand standards, quality control, a marketing strategy and business advisory support from the franchisor. While less identified with franchising, traditional or product distribution franchising is larger in total sales than business format franchising. Examples of traditional or product distribution franchising can be found in the bottling, gasoline, automotive and other manufacturing industries.

A currency in the most specific sense is money in any form when in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, especially circulating banknotes and coins.A more general definition is that a currency is a system of money (monetary units) in common use, especially for people in a nation. Under this definition, U.S. dollars (US$), euros (€), Indian rupee (₹), Japanese yen (¥), and pounds sterling (£) are examples of currencies. Currencies may act as stores of value and be traded between nations in foreign exchange markets, which determine the relative values of the different currencies. Currencies in this sense are defined by governments, and each type has limited boundaries of acceptance. Other definitions of the term "currency" appear in the respective synonymous articles: banknote, coin, and money. This article uses the definition which focuses on the currency systems of countries. One can classify currencies into three monetary systems: fiat money, commodity money, and representative money, depending on what guarantees a currency's value (the economy at large vs. the government's physical metal reserves). Some currencies function as legal tender in certain political jurisdictions. Others simply get traded for their economic value. Digital currency has arisen with the popularity of computers and the Internet. Whether digital notes and coins will be successfully developed remains dubious. Decentralized digital currencies, such as cryptocurrencies are not legal currency, strictly speaking, since they are not issued by a government monetary authority and are not legal tender. Many warnings issued by various countries note the opportunities that cryptocurrencies create for illegal activities, such as money laundering and terrorism.In 2014 the United States IRS issued a statement explaining that virtual currency is treated as property for Federal income-tax purposes and providing examples of how longstanding tax principles applicable to transactions involving property apply to virtual currency. (en)