A pinch of actuarial salt.
Mike Harrison is for my money a pension expert and has every right to rattle my cage.
OK.
I’ll keep reading your stuff, Henry, as I like your pro-member stance, but if you’re not a DB expert and haven’t read TPR’s consultation document I’ll take your views on scheme funding with a slightly larger pinch of actuarial salt.
— Mike Harrison (@HigherEdActuary) May 29, 2020
I had earlier owned up to not having read the full 175 pages of TPR’s DB funding consultation (published March 3rd) preferring the 16 paged “quick guide”. I would argue that I made it down the mountain but took the cable car not the black run!
Have you read through @TPRgovuk’s 175 page consultation document on DB funding, Henry?
It is really well written, intellectually coherent and still provides lots of flexibility.
— Mike Harrison (@HigherEdActuary) May 29, 2020
Each week I publish a round up of the C19 Actuaries reading. They are rather gentler on the amateur reader
TPR’s consultation and the wider context
As an enthusiastic amateur in actuarial matters, I don’t expect to be admitted to the inner chamber where white hot actuarial analysis is performed. But I defend my right to comment on the outcomes of their thinking.
The debate kicked off by tPR on March 3rd has been superseded by much larger debates on how we support the UK economy, our health service , our care service and most relevantly of all, the livelihoods of generations of working people who are facing unemployment.
It is helpful for those focussed on the particular to be reminded that the balance between the interests of pension sponsors, members and the PPF needs to be considered in the wider context of what is happening to ordinary people. In this, the enthusiastic amateur has the advantage of not having too intense a focus. So I would challenge Mike’s assertion that he’ll take my views with “a slightly larger pinch of actuarial salt”.
A large packet of actuarial fudge!
Sadly I have recently finished a large packet of very excellent fudge brought me by David Hare ( an eminent actuary). David brings the packet when he visits (sadly too rarely these days) and it’s intended as a peace offering before he whacks me in the solar plexus with some actuarial rabbit punches.
David’s superior grasp of numbers is matched by a superior sense of humour. I prefer his actuarial fudge to Mike’s actuarial salt but that’s because I have a sweet tooth. But whether it’s from David’s intestinal digs or from Mike’s haymakers, I get a constant intellectual battering from the profession.
The enthusiastic amateur
We’re forever being told that pension is complicated. It is so complicated that the enthusiastic amateur struggles to get to grips with any part of it before being warned off. In retail pensions the warning is usually to go and see a financial adviser (who doesn’t usually want to see you). In institutional pensions the phrase is some variant on “that’s down to the expert” which usually means down to the actuaries.
I am happy to sit at the feet of the COVID-19 actuarial response team and understand my Rs without getting the elbow, but I struggle with much of the actuarial science behind pensions which has created an exclusive consensus that brooks no challenge. Mike is not part of that consensus but he needs to keep perspective.
Just because you haven’t read the 175 page consultation, doesn’t mean your views aren’t valid. Those outside the actuarial sanctum – including Con Keating and Iain Clacher, may even be right!
