Monthly Archives: May 2014

A great way to deliver the Guidance Guarantee (for the right employer)

Josh Collins   In recent weeks, I’ve been taking the temperature of the pension trustees of large employers and found that enthusiasm for providing guidance to employees at retirement is limited. This is understandable. Do trustees want to become surrogate … Continue reading

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Accountex v Workplace Pensions Live

  Last week I went to a pensions conference (Workplace Pensions Live) and a trade show (Accountex). The Pensions Conference had a lot of talk but not much action, Accountex was the other way round. I couldn’t help agreeing with … Continue reading

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Making every minute count -effective Guidance at Retirement

            Many people say that you cannot do much to really help people in a thirty minute guidance session. I disagree; more importantly, Michelle Cracknell disagrees. Michelle is the CEO of The Pension Advisory Service … Continue reading

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Towards common data standards for auto-enrolment

The Chartered Institute for Payroll and Pension Professionals and their “Friends of AE” stitched me up with writing up the output of a working group comprising a lot of old’uns and a couple of delightful “young’uns”. Here, for the general enlightenment of others and the … Continue reading

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Can accountants ignore workplace pensions?

While all the noise is about the risks of employers not fulfilling their duties to set up and establish the processes to make “auto-enrolment” happen, the point of auto-enrolment, which is of course to deliver decent income for staff in … Continue reading

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“Something will turn up” – the Pensions PlayPen Lunch 12th May

Something usually turns up at a Pension PlayPen lunch. At yesterday’s lunch I had to wait till injury time to get my Eureka moment and it came from a first time luncher – Chris Radford. Chris’ contention was that when … Continue reading

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Call in for a Great British Pension

    The initial euphoria following the 2014 “pensions bombshell” budget may have died away, but in it’s place we are seeing real progress towards a better deal for those spending their pension pots.   Work is concentrating on two … Continue reading

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Pension Play Pen Lunch – Do we need default funds in retirement?

  The May Pension Play Pen Lunch will be held in the back gallery room of the Counting House – 50 Cornhill, London EC3 ( 250 yards to the East of Bank Station). We’ll be discussing whether we need in … Continue reading

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Is this Master Trust Assurance Framework fit for purpose?

There is an important debate to be had on the regulation of master trusts. That debate is about how we prevent poor standards invading what is currently a very well run part of workplace pensions. Until the past two weeks, I … Continue reading

Posted in dc pensions, de-risking, DWP, governance, pension playpen, pensions, Treasury | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 73 Comments

If you reading this- press this – www.pensionplaypen.com/register

  If you’re reading this, chances are you are interested in pensions. Maybe you run a small company, or advise small companies or are concerned that small companies won’t get proper guidance on what’s best when it comes to setting … Continue reading

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