I’m excited to be returning to Edinburgh for the PLSA investment conference at the end of May. I’m going as a blogger and will be reporting on the event. I attended a digital preview of the event yesterday afternoon and am the more excited as a result. Thanks to the PLSA for including me. Seniors can currently travel from London to Edinburgh for £12 or £24 return on an advanced ticket using the recent fare reductions, even “non seniors can travel for just over £15!
The PLSA are getting a lot right and though I’m no fan of some of their lobbying for procrastinating duties to share data on the pension dashboard, this document shows them at their very best (thanks Paul McGlone)
The PLSA has become more inclusive over the past five years, not just of me – but much more importantly of the new forces in pensions and lifetime saving, the master trusts and other providers of the workplace pensions – the consultants, life companies, platform providers and their entourage of advisers.
The diversity of yesteryear is diminishing as the pension industry consolidates and consolidation is both a threat and an opportunity for the PLSA. It is the pension industry’s voice on pensions and I hope that it will take up some of the campaigns that this blog espouses (including the latest campaign to improve participation and automation of pension credit).
Not since March 2020 has the PLSA met physically. At the 2020 conference, Covid was lurking. It surfaced in Edinburgh that week at Aegon’s offices which were evacuated while the conference was running. I know of at least one delegate who found himself C-19 positive during the event. At the time we felt that by hand pumping we could keep ourselves safe, actually we had no idea of the risks to personal safety we were running.
If you want to remember how it felt, read my blog at the time.
In the face of the Coronavirus, the Governor of the Bank of England cut interest rates, the Chancellor of the Exchequer doled out £30bn and the delegates at #PLSAinvest20 assiduously scrubbed their hands.
This year should be different. I hope that over the two days of the event I will be able to write about what I see and hear and help both people at the event and those who aren’t to better understand what is going on.
And above all , I look forward to renewing old acquaintances (that should not be forgot) in a new – post pandemic – atmosphere. Covid hasn’t left us but it feels as if we have mastered it. We’ve learned a lot about our own vulnerabilities and we now know a lot more about work for learning new ways to do it. But the fundamental issue remains the same, how do we fund a life after work. To that end we will venture north to wonderful Edinburgh and to understand the good that the PLSA can do
