The State Pension triple lock has taken another bashing. A committee of MPs has released a report calling for the picking of the arrangement which dates back to 2010. This guarantees that pensions will rise by the higher of inflation (measured by the Consumer Prices Index), average earnings growth or 2.5%. They say: “…the triple lock will…
When is a promise not a promise? In my household, safeguarding of confectionary and sharing of toys are both subject to frequent exemptions. But beyond domestic squabbles, the subject is getting an airing in the pensions world. In the firing line is the defined benefit pension. This is the kind that gives retirees an income…
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,…
UPDATE: The vote is in and 53% of the independent Sports Direct shareholders voted against management and called for an independent investigation. That’s a record level of support for an employment-related resolution in the UK. The final vote still won’t pass as Ashley himself owns 55% of Sports Direct shares, but it’s a major win for the…
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…
Today the BBC are reporting that over 600 local bank branches have been closed in the last 12 months. It’s a tragedy both for staff who have lost jobs and for the communities that need the service they provided. It also poses a crucial question for unions about how we get the kind of banking system…
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”.…