This move will enable your #pension scheme to invest more widley to help ‘build back better’. The deal is you may pay higher charges with no guarantee of higher returns. https://t.co/dBkJoXhFsT

— Josephine Cumbo (@JosephineCumbo) October 27, 2021

Plans to loosen the pension charge cap are not news in themselves, there has been consultation on this within the DWP for months and it’s widely been predicted that the cap will be lifted to allow default funds to make their capital more productive by investing in assets with a positive social and environmental impact.

What is new is that this proposal forms part of the Chancellor’s 2021 autumn budget. Not only does this send a clear signal of the Government’s intent to make pension money matter, but it demonstrate just who is bossing the pensions agenda.

Teresa Coffey and Guy Opperman look as sidelined as their coalition predecessors, Ian Duncan Smith and Steve Webb were, when George Osborne introduced pension freedoms in 2014’s budget.

This time, the rabbit isn’t coming out of the hat as pensions minister Guy Opperman has been stroking this bunny for a few months. But he looks more like the brakeman than the train-driver as the  Private Market Express hurtles down the tracks.

The FT greeted the news as a scoop. I’m not so sure they can claim that credit as this blog has been trailing the demise of the cap for several months. All the same, it is interesting that for the first time in many years, pension policy is worthy of a