Yesterday I went to a public meeting on measuring the value of illiquids in DC pension saving schemes. Interesting as this was, I am sworn not to mention who was speaking, who was organising or what was said.

I was interested partly because of comments made by the DWP at a recent Corporate Adviser Conference that suggests it is concerned that short term reporting of the J-Curves (unjolly hockey sticks)  created by short term returns on illiquids could render ambitious pension plans an orange or red on the VFM RAG scale.

Thankfully, Pension PlayPen is going to cover this very topic and we have Neil Maines, a senior Investment Consultant at XPS who will be giving us his thoughts on his experiences “down under”.

Neil spent the last 5 years working with multiple Australian DC schemes and policymakers. For good reason, Australia is often lauded as having a gold standard pensions system. However, this doesn’t mean our peers down under got everything right first time. Neil will discuss some of the less well publicised challenges the Australian DC market has faced including some views on how the UK can avoid similar pitfalls over the coming years.

This is particularly the case when it comes to performance league-tabling. The DWP told a recent Corporate Adviser Conference. Daniel Hatton (pictured) was explicit

Neil will be taking a look at VFM plus his view on illiquids for mere mortals like us. We won’t have to wait till November to hear the thoughts of the great and the good, we can hear them next Tuesday at 10.30 AM via Teams

For free admittance to this topical and controversial session, use this link