Four things your clients will call you about this week

Nationals roundup: Expect calls this week from women and men worried about the implications of that ECJ ban on gender-based underwriting.

The Daily Mail's Stephen Womack highlights the state of panic following the ruling, writing millions of women will be charged more for their car insurance while hundreds of thousands of older men face smaller pensions.

The court last week banned insurers from using gender in setting the price of cover. It did not impose the ban immediately, but the verdict represents the biggest insurance shake-up for decades.

It will affect motor, life, illness, travel and some medical cover. It will also hit savers converting pensions into an income for life through annuities.

But insurers will be looking for alternative ways to charge reckless drivers more. More firms will offer satellite trackers to younger drivers, which measure where and how a car is driven.

Simon Douglas, director of AA Insurance, says: 'Insurers will develop more sophisticated ways of rating people to make up for the loss of gender pricing. We might see the kind of car you drive or your occupation counting for more in setting your premium.'

Elsewhere, expect calls from worried ISA investors following a piece the Sunday Times ran detailing advisers' concerns investors are chasing "hot sectors".

Advisers have raised fears, the paper writes, investors are chasing hot sectors such as commodities with their stocks and shares ISA allowance, rather than building a balanced portfolio which can withstand volatile markets.

Some 42% of the top 20 ISA trades reported by the stockbroker Self-Trade last year were in the highly specialised resources sector, with BP the most traded stock.

Four of the 20 top-selling stocks were gold mining shares, while the silver mining and exploration group Arian Silver Corporation comes in at number eight.

However, while the price of gold rose above $1,400 an ounce last week, it is expected to come down to about $1,300 next year. Similarly, oil is trading above $100 a barrel, but is forecast to fall to about $85 by the end of this year.

With record low interest rates on cash ISAs, investors are increasingly turning to stocks-and-shares ISAs this season. Self-select ISAs, which allow you to build your own portfolio of stocks, bonds, investment trusts and ETFs, are proving particularly popular with adventurous investors.

While Price Waterhouse Coopers said last week UK equities are still trading at 12% below fair value, HSBC Private Bank took the opposite stance and said it had downgraded its stance on equities to "neutral".

With such uncertainty rife in the markets, advisers are now recommending more "plain vanilla" homes for investors' money, such as global growth funds and UK growth and income funds, according to research from the Association of Investment Companies (AIC).

Meanwhile, prepare for ETF investors to inundate you with calls following a warning from the Financial Times over poor marketing material.

The warning comes as research from the Financial Times shows ETFs can vary enormously in how good they are at tracking an index, with those in more illiquid markets more likely to have large tracking errors.

Even funds tracking the FTSE 100 can have tracking errors of up to 3.45%, data from Morningstar shows.

The biggest variations can be found in emerging market ETFs, which are tracking indices that are far more illiquid.

ETFs tracking Chinese indices have tracking errors of up to 18%, while those tracking illiquid markets including Taiwan and South Africa had tracking errors of around 10%. Some are lazy trackers - the PowerShares Hong Kong China fund only rebalances itself once a year.

Last week, the FSA said marketing material for ETFs might not fully explain the risks of the funds to investors.

Finally, the Independent's David Prosser says the outlook for the housing market is "unremittingly grim" after figures from the Halifax for February showed the annual decline in house prices to be 2.8%.

"We know the decline is not going to be arrested in the next few months because we already have data on demand and supply right now," he writes.

"Surveyors say that while supply is tightening, with fewer new instructions from sellers, demand is constricting more quickly, with buyers ever thinner on the ground.

"Approvals of mortgages - which, by the way, are already more expensive than they were in 2010 - remain stagnant.

"What about later in the year? Well, the macro-economic environment does not augur well. Rising unemployment, declining consumer confidence and a level of inflation that requires a monetary policy response are not factors that are conducive to stabilisation of the housing market."