Monthly Archives: December 2019

An inflation-busting “pay-rise” for low earners – but “who pays?”

The Government’s announced that for pay periods starting  on or after 1st April 2020 the National Living Wage (NLW) will increase by 6.2% – four times the rate of inflation. The NLW (for over 25 year olds) will increase  from … Continue reading

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NHS pensions are damaging the NHS

his article is by Dr Nitin Arora I asked to publish it as I have followed his work on twitter to help pension professionals understand the current problems facing members of the NHS pension scheme. As I have written in … Continue reading

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Any pension publicity (is good publicity)

It’s that’s time of the year when we don’t know what day it is. Well, according to the newspapers, it’s PENSIONS DAY. pic.twitter.com/ehGyIRL43M — Alistair McQueen (@HelloMcQueen) December 30, 2019 A bad news pension story? Not for Sue. Hats off … Continue reading

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An employee who’s job was to be sacked

According to no less an authority than Danny Baker, this story is absolutely true. Harrods in the sixties employed someone to be sacked- surely the best job in the world. Apparently  the employee was paid to sit among the boxes on … Continue reading

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2019 was not a year to hedge your bets

As the decade closes , it’s a time to look back as well as forward. For the vast majority of us, our financial health depends on valuations of assets the price of which we cannot directly control. We may build … Continue reading

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Let’s kick the dogs out of the manger!

A good reason why pension dashboard infrastructure should be open … any payroll provider could then include pension information directly on payslips. I expect that is far more effective than signposting a single government provided dashboard — alan chaplin (@achaplin71) … Continue reading

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“Let’s empower payroll”:- Pension PlayPen’s input to the Open Finance initiative

1. “You have asked what action can we take to help ensure the potential of open banking is maximised“. This response is from Pension PlayPen. Pension PlayPen was set up in 2013 to help small and medium size employers establish … Continue reading

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A progressive way to talk about pensions

A progressive approach to workplace pensions Yesterday I talked about the importance of reporting, both to and from employers. Employers want to understand how their workplace pension is working and savers want to know how their money is doing. The … Continue reading

Posted in Payroll, Pension Freedoms, pensions | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

How are your staff’s pensions getting on?

  If you remember back to the mid part of this fading decade, one of the issues facing the 1.4m employers who had to stage auto-enrolment, was which workplace pension to choose for your staff. If you were part of … Continue reading

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My dream of a “future world of later-life content” – happy Christmas

Christmas is a time for dreaming, walking in the air and ding donging merrily on high. So my Christmas day blog describes a dream that could become reality, only if the world turns out a special way. And maybe it … Continue reading

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