Monthly Archives: July 2015

What employers can do to get their members better pensions

Yesterday I had a chance to talk with a large employer about what they can do to help improve the outcomes of their DC plans. Influencing employees to get the best out of their pension savings means getting them to … Continue reading

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What AE’s doing to pension saving – guest blog from Richard White

Richard White works for Portal Financial a Rochester based IFA who are producing some really interesting stuff on pensions. This is Richard’s first blog for us and I hope we’ll be able to feature more! Research highlighted in our blog post … Continue reading

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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 and not potential criminals. Sadly, this attitudinal shift doesn’t seem … Continue reading

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“We all defer together?” – Guest Blog from Ralph Frank

The recently announced consultation on pensions tax relief has stirred up thought and debate on the issue of incentivising long-term saving.  There are theoretical, commercial and practical aspects to be addressed in this process of defining an approach to pensions … Continue reading

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“Tax relief – what are the numbers?” Guest blog from Ralph Frank

The Government has repeatedly expressed its concern, both in the 2015 Budget (paragraph 1.232) and in the recently announced consultation on pensions tax relief, at the level of income tax forgone through the provision of pension tax relief.  This concern … Continue reading

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“Another girl- another Planet” – the wonderful world of NEST

Helen Dean, the new CEO of NEST has set out her stall in the pages of Professional Pensions. Much of what she says is intelligent and helpful Helping .. small and micro employers means seeing AE through their eyes. Instead of … Continue reading

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The transfer mess gets worse…

It’s been some weeks since I wrote about transfers. To recap, I have been predicting a seizure in the transfer market , resulting from high demand, low-advisory capacity and pipes blocked with regulatory effluent. So it doesn’t come as a … Continue reading

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Don’t you -forget about DB – guest blog from the TUC

This blog is written by Tim Sharp of the  TUC, thanks to Hilary Salt for pointing it out and for Tim and the TUC for allowing us to republish it! It is easy to overlook defined benefit (DB) pension schemes … Continue reading

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Why “pensions ISAs” must be more than ISAs

Ros Altmann has recently commented that simply topping up ISAs and calling them “Pension ISAs” is not going to help solve our long-term retirement problems. The danger of using the ISA structure is that it ignores the fundamentals- that people … Continue reading

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Pension PlayPen’s response to the Treasury on pension tax-relief

The Treasury has asked eight great questions which go to the heart of how we incentivise pension saving. Here are our responses. We haven’t formally sent these responses to the Treasury yet, so if you have any comments, please send … Continue reading

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