What’s 45 squared?  Please don’t tell me the answer’s owned by middle aged professionals who are good at maths. 45 squared is 2025, we have happily reached that age- TOGETHER!

I hope that all generations of adults will  cheer each other, I do not believe in ill-will. I am hoping that 45 year olds and those who are younger will recognise that us older ones want to help and help them to have security when they get to our age!

We can do more if we work together and I think there is something that 45 and 25 year olds can value in the vision of the 63 year old Pension Plowman!

I am currently  engaged with the work of Pension SuperHaven and the partnership of firms who are engaged in finding new ways to provide pensions from DC pots.

My thanks include Hanover Re who are helping us price risk, including the risks of those like me with reduced life expectancy.

They include my friends at Retirement Line who are helping us create a system to compare what individuals can get from pensions relative to annuities (and what needs to happen for a drawdown to work better)

Collegia who have taught us a lot about DC administration and communication

First Actuarial who are helping us with pension administration

Colleagues who understand how to invest and have the capacity to harness investment growth to pensions payable in decades to come.

My friends involved with the Trusteeship of the Pension we hope to make available (PSH) to those like me who want a pension rather than an annuity or drawdown in 2025

My legal friends who are helping with the correct wording to protect all participants and keep them on an equal standard.

The Pensions Regulator , the FCA and the DWP who have been helpful in guiding our practice.

I cannot say that we are there yet. we need to inspire the confidence not just of the regulators and legislators but the fiduciaries for the millions of people whose pensions are their responsibility. I do not underestimate the importance of these people nor the care with which they make decisions.

Change is very hard to achieve and we are now sufficiently far from the time when money purchased a pension (the DB system) that many are unaware of the principles under which Defined Benefit pensions were set up. They were set up with the confidence of those who believed that a self perpetuating pension scheme was possible , provided that the sponsors that set them up, could see their undertakings passing to others.

My very good friends Andrew Young, Ros Altmann and many politicians got the Pension Protection Fund in place in the early years of the century. Now that fund is achieving more than it needs to and the question how it can make it easier for other DB schemes. I am confidant that it can and it will and that it will be the rock that other DB schemes will build from.

I do not see DC saving as the answer for most people in retirement, I see conversion of DC savings into pensions that provide people with the prospect of a replacement income when work no longer becomes the central source of financial security.

I hope that the Government has decided to reconsider that DC savings system as a means to make people wealthy, it will only achieve that for the lucky few. I hope that it will find a way for people to bring their pots together (using the dashboard that should open next year).

I hope that the state pension will continue to grow in real terms because of the triple -lock. I hope we stand behind Pension Credits for those who need them.  I hope that the many people who set up the brilliant DB  system that flourished last century with take schemes such as the Local Government, USS and other flourishing pension schemes as examples where Britain can once again rise to the top.

We have been supressed by a constrained view where pensions are seen as bad by risk managers. In this constraint we have fallen behind in investment. We have been encouraged to lend money but not invest in our economy. We need a new vision for what we are doing when we invest for pensions we may still be receiving in 70 or 80 years time.

Thinking about 70-80 years time, I would like to dedicate 2025 to a woman who is 92 and still driving our family. Her husband entered the NHS pension in the 1950s and she still gets paid a pension that he and she earned.

Later life chez nous!

We should take her,  Carter ,Keating, Scott and the many readers and commentators on this blog now well into their later lives as inspiration.  May they inspire master trusts and contract based DC plans to look beyond the “pension annuity” the 45 professionals should  join such pensioners  in a vision of a pension scheme which can invest  DC savings for a better later life.

Cheers!

Thanks to the two 27 year olds who helped keep my brain working in the middle of November!