Guy
Henry Tapper
Tom
On Tuesday, May 10th, Tom McPhail and I will be putting questions to the Pensions Minister at a one hour on-line coffee morning.
Here are some of our questions.
- Pension PlayPen is leading a campaign to increase participation in Pension Credit and make it easy to automate – what are the wins for the DWP and the country?
- The DWP has taken control of the promotion of Value For Money- how does this help improve pension decision making?
- The CDC scheme development is taking a long time, are there ways to deliver some of the benefits of CDC using a more retail approach – especially for decumulation?
- The DWP have recently decided against auto-enrolling people into Pension Wise appointments, what are your preferred options for getting the over 50s engaged?
If you have questions , you’d like answered, please put them in the comments box or send to henry@agewage.com.
The event is at 10.30 am on Tuesday 10th May and can be accessed by joining http://www.pensionplaypen.com and finding the link in events.
Two questions from me, Henry:
1. When might we realistically see auto-enrolment minimum contributions increase, and see the scope of auto-enrolment widened?
2. Do you feel there is merit in considering the forthcoming Australian move to mandate their schemes to have clear options for members to receive retirement incomes, here in the UK.
I think Guy has already answered 1…
“The government is committed to an increase”
What this actually means (in my opinion)…
“The treasury will tell me how much and when I am allowed to begin implementing any changes to the AE regime, whether contributions, earnings rules or tax relief. The government has no firm timetable and has no timetable to produce a timetable.”
I like Guy, I like his approach, I think he genuinely tries, but I don’t think he is in control of any matters to do with tax relief, minimum contributions or similar.
Also I don’t believe there is any appetite at present to increase minimum AE contributions from either government, employers, members (or their unions) all of whom would have to contribute out of their squeezed pay packets.