John Cridland, one suspects, has probably spent much of the summer in a darkened room with a cold flannel over his eyes. The former boss of the employer’s group the CBI has produced, under the auspices of his Independent Review of State Pension Age, a useful and sophisticated account of the many challenges and complications…
The late James Brown had a complicated enough life without worrying about UK pensions saving. But the Godfather of Soul’s famous, if patronising, take on gender politics provides an appropriate soundtrack for the state of British retirement savings. Women make up just 36 per cent of those eligible to be automatically enrolled into workplace pensions,…
Forget the stereotype of the cruise or the conservatory. For many babyboomers reaching their sixties means joblessness and ill health, according to TUC research published today. Around one in eight (12%) men and women are forced to stop working before state pension age due to ill-health or disability, our report Postponing the pension: are we all…
Former Pensions Ministers don’t retire quietly from public life it appears. Baroness Altmann, the latest to depart Caxton House, has since criticised the difficulty of long-term policy making in government . And, over the weekend, called for the ending of the triple lock that governs state pension increases. The cost of raising the state pension by the greatest of inflation,…
Pensions Minister Baroness Altmann is to leave government, we learned over the weekend. The reshuffle fortunes of her sidekick Workie, the much lampooned multi-coloured monster she launched to promote workplace pensions, have yet to be confirmed. Altmann marked her departure from government with a letter to the Prime Minister criticising “short-term political considerations” for inhibiting…
The European pensions regulator has stepped back from an attempt to standardise pension funding rules across the European Union. The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) has concluded, rather unsurprisingly, that the diversity of European pension schemes means that harmonising capital or funding requirements for IORPs is not suitable “at this point in time”.…
For the Chancellor, it was one bit of fiscal news to cheer in a Budget of downward revisions, cuts and slices. The Treasury has netted £200 million more than expected in tax from pension fund withdrawals after dramatically loosening restrictions in April.
The Budget spectacle is usually littered with animal references: rabbits out of hats, foxes shot and so on. This year we can add to the zoological ranks, an attempt to kill two birds with one stone. A Chancellor faced with a generation struggling to get a toe-hold in an inflated housing market and inadequate levels…
The Department for Work and Pensions’ employers’ pension survey published today stretches across 92 pages but there is one clear message apparent to readers: little is going to change regarding the level of UK pension saving without action on automatic enrolment minimum contribution rates. The report shows that the vast majority of employers are planning to…
The hitherto obscure subject of pensions tax relief is likely to be in the foreground when George Osborne reveals the content of his latest Budget later this month. On the table is a potential move to flat-rate tax relief, an approach favoured by the TUC. But, if given the nod, key decisions about implementation would determine whether…