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When we make company pensions compulsory..
Aon Hewitt have one us a favour by uncovering a flaw in the DWP auto-enrolment regulations that works counter to the Government’s “big” intention to make sure everyone has access to a a proper pension....
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Small businesses wanting to avoid small pensions
In September we sent out 80,000 e-mails to companies in the UK with between 5 and 100 staff, the sort of companies that will be obliged to auto-enrol their staff between 2014 and 2015 and are today...
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Is Auto-Enrolment a busted flush? Pension Play Pen lunch Jan 2012
The Play Pen sat down for the 26th time at the Counting House on Monday 9th Jan 2012-the first working Monday of the month. It concluded that their was life in auto-enrolment though enthusiasm for the...
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Popcorn pensions
Image via Wikipedia I was sitting in Kentucky Fried Chicken with my friend Mr Peter Shellswell last week. We were eating the salad in case you are wondering. Popcorn chicken and gravy is my fave but...
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Project managing auto-enrolment
I received a polite e-mail from a company’s Finance Director yesterday. “I see First Actuarial are offering a project management service for small and medium sized companies staging auto-enrolment in...
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2 cheers for the Regulator’s new clothes
Not before time, the Pension Regulator is getting to grips with its responsibilities to protect members of UK DC plans. I am pleased that the Regulator is getting involved (one cheer) and I’m pleased...
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Employers can help staff with their money – if only we’d let them
I had the pleasure of meeting with Jane Drysdale last week. She is HRD of OCS – the office cleaning people who employ 35,000 people , many on zero-hours contracts, many on minimum wages and many on the...
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Why employers cannot be “provider agnostic” about their workplace pension.
On the 21st March 2013, a few days after the budget, the FCA published a “Guide to the regulation of workplace defined contribution pensions”. The document’s mainly about giving pension people...
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……we have a problem, Brighton.
Every so often we get asked questions by people to whom the answers really matter. I’ll leave you to guess who might be asking these ones! a)Is there really a problem for unadvised small and...
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Why we have no time for “Banker Immunity”.
We have not seen bankers marched in handcuffs from their desks but now it seems we might. The regulators have put-out a consultation paper that seeks to pin accountability on Directors (including...
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The Pension Industry cannot serve two masters
Pensions are at a crossroads. For 30 years they have been travelling in the direction of the financial services and we could continue that direction of travel. We could turn left and go Dutch or turn...
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The time to clean up drawdon’s NOW!
We owe it to ourselves as Pension Professionals to make sure that we treat our customers fairly. Over the past three years we have seen a move to restore confidence in pensions, the RDR,...
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How to create sustainable regulation of workplace pensions
I am not a lawyer, if you want to read a learned discussion on the impact of the various forms of regulation that could apply to financial services, if you want to explore the theory. I suggest you...
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GRAXIT! – an open letter to Phil Loney on how he can help solve the GAR problem.
An open letter to Phil Loney – CEO of Royal London Phil You’ve started a good debate on Guaranteed Annuity Rates and how we should manage them in this time of Pension Freedom. Getting out of GAR...
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Why the FCA should take a leaf out of tPR’s book.
The Pensions Regulator have been re-born over the last five years and become focussed on helping advisers, trustees and employees solve pension problems. They have started treating us as customers...
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Bringing down the cost of advice #FAMR
The Financial Advice Market Review asks whether Britain can bridge the advice gap for those people who “want to work hard, do the right thing and get on in life but do not have significant wealth”,...
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Disruption – is how social media regulates
In the context of Business continuity management, Disruption is an event which causes an “unplanned, negative deviation from the expected delivery … according to the organization’s objectives”. In...
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Ten reasons for the FinTech revolution
This blog, provided by Innovate Finance, takes a step back by providing us with an overview of the traditional financial services sector to determine what exactly has prompted its disruption...
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Should the FCA oversee mastertrusts?
That was the question that was asked by one of the panellists at the launch of the PPI’s “Comparison of the regulatory frameworks for DC pensions. I am listed as one of the people providing input to...
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What has the financial services industry learned from auto-enrolment?
Talk to most people in ‘regulated’ financial services and they’ll tell you that for them, auto-enrolment hasn’t really taken off. If you pick beneath the skin , this means that it hasn’t yielded the...
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