It’s a hard sale to make. “See that bird in your hand? Well I am taking it away. But don’t worry – in 50 years time you will get two, actually make that one, pecking around over there in the bush.” This is the scenario the Treasury is effectively exploring with its consultation on changing the pension…
New Pensions Minister Ros Altmann has caused a stir with the publication this week of her pre-Election musings about the possible desirability of extending workplace savings beyond pensions. This is a useful and important development because a strategy to improve short and medium term savings could bolster long-term savings as well as help people develop greater…
Legislation paving the way for new-style collective pensions was one of several achievements in Steve Webb’s tenure as the Coalition government’s Pensions Minister. Collective Defined Contribution (CDC) pensions are a mainstay of the Dutch pensions system and have been used in other countries such as Canada. They offer a potential means of reforming the increasingly individualised UK pensions system by…
With the honourable exception of The Marvelettes, those embarking on a journey typically have an end point in mind. Yet, Destination Anywhere has been the soundtrack to the recent pension liberalisation changes.
It is welcome that this morning the Financial Times is reporting (behind a paywall) that the Work and Pensions Committee, under its new chairman Frank Field, is to scrutinise so-called pensions freedom reform. The policy, which means savers in defined contribution pensions no longer have to buy an annuity on retirement, was rushed in in…
When caught doing something you shouldn’t and given another chance, it is usually wise to reform your ways. However, it appears that large sections of the pensions industry are intent on ignoring this basic piece of common sense. Rules requiring independent governance committees to be established for workplace personal pensions came into force at the…
Margaret Thatcher’s now notorious Sermon on the Mound gave the notion of “choice” a central place in both public policy and Christian thinking. Nearly 30 years later, Thatcher’s heirs are elevating choice to the paramount principle of pensions policy-making. I have written an article for Professional Pensions, arguing that the latest application of this dogma in the…
The wide-ranging report being published today by the Work and Pensions Commission provides both a pretty comprehensive to-do list for the next Pensions Minister and an important warning that urgency is required on many of these tasks. Among its proposals are: The establishment of a new Pensions Commission to consider pensions policy. Consideration of increased…
It says much for the resilience of the sort of consensual approach facilitated by the Pensions Commission of a decade ago that even before the government’s rash and irresponsible pensions freedom reforms have been implemented, opinion is coalescing around the best ways to ameliorate their likely worst effects.
Amid all the uncertainties about post-election pensions policy, thanks to the unknown impact of fringe parties, the vagaries of coalition negotiations and the uncertain fates of individual party spokespersons, one subject looks likely to be near the top of any administration’s agenda: reform of pensions tax relief. The latest instalment in this debate is provided by…