Monthly Archives: March 2023

(I’ve been) IMPROVING DIVERSITY & INCLUSION IN THE PENSIONS INDUSTRY

Posted on March 21, 2023 by henry tapper

I don’t turn down the chance to sit in on a panel of the young and the good opining on improving D&I. But I admit that turning up at Travers Smith Braithwaite to find myself the only person over 35 … Continue reading →

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Macron wins his pension battle – can we win ours?

Posted on March 21, 2023 by henry tapper

    Last night , Emmanuel Macron won his vote – just. He survived two no-confidence votes.The no-confidence motion filed by a small group called Liot garnered support from 278 members of parliament in the National Assembly, falling short by … Continue reading →

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Politicised pensions become anti-social.

Posted on March 21, 2023 by henry tapper

Rishi Sunak has been trying to explain the budget’s pension reforms to the BBC and he’s not been doing a good job of it. “This is about cutting waiting lists…we need our best doctors, our experienced doctors, we need them … Continue reading →

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Vive la differance – Britain and France’s approaches to state pension reform

Posted on March 20, 2023 by henry tapper

“To finance our [pensions] system, which is among the most generous in the world, we must progressively ask those who can to work more” Vive la France, vive la réalité économique. https://t.co/cozeSGgEEQ — Mike Harrison (@HigherEdActuary) March 20, 2023 This … Continue reading →

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Another Sunday, another bail-out.

Posted on March 20, 2023 by henry tapper

Part one ; what’s going on with the banks? Just how confusing news of the take over of Credit Suisse by UBS appears is in this paragraph clipped from the FT’s overnight report on the matter. “This is no bailout. … Continue reading →

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Do we need a cost and charges test to work out value ?

Posted on March 19, 2023 by henry tapper

  This is a long and involved blog but it deals with an important subject in a timely way. One of the perceived unfairness’s of DC rather than DB pensions is that DB pensioners have all costs paid by the … Continue reading →

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What’s it like to be retired? – (what they don’t tell you about retiring early).

Posted on March 19, 2023 by henry tapper

Guest blog  Martin Pollard Former Mechanical Engineer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1980–2011)Author  I retired at age 55. That was 11 years ago. Here are some of the things I noticed and learned. Retirement is not like vacation. In retirement you have a different … Continue reading →

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Was this really “Match of the Day”? (Simon Carne at his best)

Posted on March 18, 2023 by henry tapper

This is a guest post by my friend     Simon Carne    You can sign up to Simon’s blog- “irregular thoughts” here.  UK’s news agenda was briefly dominated by a contest in which both sides turned in a poor … Continue reading →

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Don’t go down without a fight – take advice before sacking your manager!

Posted on March 18, 2023 by henry tapper

Julius Pursaill and I get on very well, we see eye to eye on most things and though I don’t have his investment insight, I think he recognizes I know a thing or two about how people think about pensions! … Continue reading →

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VFM – the greatest tech challenge for pensions today

Posted on March 18, 2023 by henry tapper

The greatest tech challenge for pensions right now is not the pension dashboard.  Dashboards are in the hands of DWP, Maps, the PDP and the Regulators and until the new PDP Chair arrives, we have to get on with doing … Continue reading →

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