The Pension Commission has been reformed to address pension inadequacy. While there are significant concerns over employees not...
Solving the self-employment pensions conundrum
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Pensions
Will the Pensions Commission solve inadequacy?
Last week the government announced The Pensions Commission will be reformed to focus on solving pensions adequacy. At the...
Would Labour’s wealth fund be a good idea?
After the torpor of Tory government, Labour has hit the road running. Yesterday Rachel Reeves said she would be pursuing plans...
Is this the death of LDI?
Most felt concerned went they heard an obscure part of the pension universe almost blew up the UK’s financial system. The...
What went wrong with LDI
A few weeks ago liability-driven investment (LDI) went from an obscure pension back water to front page news because it...
Why do pension schemes use liability-driven investment?
Since the end of September articles about liability-driven investment (LDI) have gone from the inside pages of specialist...
The government’s new piggy bank
Hot on the heels of Ian Duncan Smith’s suggestion that pension schemes should invest in unicorn technology companies came last...
Look forward in anger
Every pension journalist is aware of the intergenerational unfairness baked into our retirement system. Baby boomers working in...
The defined benefit pensions black run
Conventional wisdom says legacy defined benefit pensions will tide over those retiring in the next few decades while defined...
Pensions for the self-employed
While auto-enrolment has bolstered pension coverage of those working for others, retirement provision has ebbed away from the...
A better way forward
In yesterday’s blog post I discussed how George Osborne’s freedom and choice has made it more challenging for scheme members to...
Freedom and choice: five years on
In April 2015 Chancellor George Osborne changed the way people could access their defined contribution pension pots after the...
Unfunded public sector schemes
In this final post examining the current pension landscape in the UK, we turn our attention to pension schemes for public...
Public sector pensions: the local government pension scheme
This series of blog posts has explained how pensions have evolved in the UK for those working in the private sector. Now it’s...
Auto-enrolling the private sector
In the last couple of posts I explained how the Labour government responded to the decline in the number of active members of...
Auto-enrolment: the Pension Commission’s ‘big idea’
The last post discussed how the Pension Commission was established by the Labour government in 2002 to review the level of...
Rebuilding the UK’s private sector pensions
In my last three blog posts I explained how the gold-standard of defined benefit pensions had turned from a useful recruiting...
The rise and fall of the gold-standard pension scheme – part three
In my last post, I discussed how the introduction of new accounting standards at the start of the millennium cemented the fate...
The rise and fall of the gold-standard pension scheme – part two
In the last post, I discussed how changes during the 1990s turned defined benefit pension from a useful recruiting tool into an...
The rise and fall of the gold-standard pension scheme – part one
In the first post of this series explaining the history of UK pensions, we discussed the concept of a retirement income and the...
What is a pension?
This is the first in a series of posts which aim to bring some clarity to pensions. I aim to explain pensions from first...
A step closer to the death of the company pension scheme
The pension minister’s announcement that restrictions on the National Employment Savings Trust will be abolished in 2017 is a...
Beware of narrow government vision
Today I received a press release which, at first glance, looked like one any self-respecting financial journalist should ignore....
Tackling the pensions education gap
I’ll admit it: I have strong opinions about pensions and investment. I find it particularly vexing when anyone uses the word...
It’s time to consider compulsion
In the somewhat dry and technical world of pensions it is a good week when life is enlivened by two parties expressing equally...
An uncertain future for fund management
Last week KPMG issued a report on the asset management industry declaring the number of global players would halve by 2030....
Time for a cohesive pensions policy
t’s inevitable coalition government policy will be a Frankenstein monster – ideas from different parties are stitched together...
Not this form of collectivism
A collective defined contribution scheme, which pools together assets from multiple companies, has much to recommend it. It’s...
Is member engagement back on the agenda?
Even though more than two months have passed since Budget, the pensions industry is still coming to terms with the long-term...
The pension cost obsession
After months of speculation, the announcement by the government at the end of March that it will impose a 0.75% charge cap on...
When saving is a dirty word
Indulge me in a thought experiment. Imagine that an asset management firm has commissioned a marketing company to...