I do have a question, Virgin Money.

“Why am I or anyone else reading  a Virgin IGC report for 2023 , published in August 2024 on a product that was wound up in February this year.”

Virgin’s dalliance with workplace pensions is over. In January the ill-fated and little lamented Virgin Stakeholder Pension was finally put to rest and savers transferred to a new Virgin SIPP. The final report from Virgin IGC’s Chair , Dianne Day , is therefore entirely retrospective and of little but academic interest. The distinguished membership are simply reporting on the handover and the final year’s value that savers got from the Stakeholder Plan.

The images are the same as the 2022 report , the boxes are all ticked and the document runs to 31 pages. But bizarrely, I can remember virtually nothing to comment on.

I say “bizarrely” because this is an IGC with history, one that former Chair Sir David Chapman cared passionately about.

The rubric tells us

The Independent Governance Committee (IGC) have published their latest annual report for the Virgin Stakeholder Pension. This report sets out the work the IGC have carried out during the period, outlines their plans for 2024 and includes Virgin Money’s response to the report.

For “latest” read “last”. The IGC has no plans for 2024 other than to publish this document and the 2024 report will never appear, despite the IGC reporting in August 2024. Never have I had so little reason to report. The VFM report is identical to 2022’s- but who cares?

Dianne Day is an extremely competent chair with many years experience on the Fidelity IGC but she is reduced to reporting on Virgin’s limited ambition

The Virgin Money Personal Pension is expected to
develop further over time, to meet the needs of its
pension savers. In 2024-5, the provider plans to add
a flexible access drawdown for customers so that you
can choose to receive a regular income in retirement.
With that will come the option to invest in four different
Investment Pathways. The provider plans to establish a
new independent body, the Virgin Money Governance
Advisory Arrangement (GAA), which will review the
Investment Pathways prior to launch, and assess and
report annually on the Investment Pathways’ value for
money thereafter.

Virgin Money are a well funded organisation and one wonders how this accords with what it considers its consumer duty towards savers many of whom have stuck by Virgin for 20 years.

There are some valedictory words from Virgin Money’s CEO of investment. This statement is given prominence.

2023 was positive for both bond and equity markets, as inflation around the
world started to fall and markets started to expect and price in, interest rate cuts.
The Bank of England paused interest rate hikes (at 5.25%) in the final quarter of
the year with the expectation shifting to rates having peaked and that the next
move would be down.

This has no relevance to an IGC report – it may have been cut and pasted from another document.

I am going to give this tired effort an orange for its VFM assessment (it is complete) , its written with patient diligence (but is hardly a riveting read) so gets an orange, The IGC seems to have overseen the transition to the SIPP and the wind up of the Stakeholder Pension which completed in February 2024 – properly. It gets an orange for staying the course.

Thank you and goodnight.