First the advert.. Tuesday (today) 10.30 am event ; free ticket at the bottom of the blog.
Having made a mistake and locked myself out of the excellent session led by Pensions for Purpose, I’m not going to do it twice!
If like me, you failed to make it to the game changing that may happen with DB pensions. If we listen to Pension Oldie we may end up with more DB plans. He wants DB plans to reopen when we realise the true value of DB (and CDC) plans and compare the value for money they provide relative to DC plans.
If we listen to Con Keating we will recognise that surpluses are ephemeral and what is needed is long term funding of pensions through investment rather than the huge sponsor contributions paid to funds for liabilities that appeared huger than today. His suggestion is that Government intervenes to make sure that surpluses (and other assets in “pensions”) are subject to exchange control restrictions, ensuring that UK pension money stays invested in the UK.
You might hear from Anthony Barker who spoke last week about the arguments of who gets the benefit of surpluses. Others may argue in future events (such as Tuesdays) that fiduciary obligations are to members not to sponsors (not all DB pensioners have the golden cloak that many argue’s in their wardrobe).
Bobby Riddaway didn’t see pension surpluses make it to the top of the trustee 2025 agenda. The new funding surpluses require future responsibilities to provide for future expenses, this hardly looks like the Government disrupting the current antagonism towards taking risk at the Pensions Regulator.
Bryn Davies, pointed out that unions have historically brokered deals on surpluses and how they are returned to members and sponsors. He pointed out that without unions , there would be less broking, the money went just to the sponsor. Bryn sees this as problematic and a big debate when the Pension Bill is published later this year.
William McGrath argued that the fiduciary duty that he saw Bobby Riddaway argued for , could be released from their current obligations. For him the investment targeting against gilts (+ 1-1.5%) is not enough, the big story is can trustees get big investing into real assets with gilts + targets several times those current in place.
If you cannot access the video via http://www.pensionplaypen.com, you can access it here. It was well chaired by Steve Goddard with superb steering by Laasya Shekaran, Director at Pensions for Purpose
I hope that we will see many of the speakers who contributed to these debates, continue to do so in future debates and indeed to the PLSA events. I am delighted to hear that John Hamilton , Chair of Trustees at Stagecoach, will be speaking on the Wednesday (12th March). The Pensions Minister will be speaking at 1.45 pm on the 11th March. I will be reporting on both events.
The PLSA is not cheap but Pension PlayPen can be; if you have read here , you are entitled to a free link to the Hymans event , advertised above
Free link to the event on Tuesday (today) 10.30 am with Hymans
A personal view, but this wasn’t a debate.
A debate should be a discussion, as of a public question in an assembly, involving opposing viewpoints.
The only opposing viewpoints to two actuaries parroting TPR’s latest DB funding code were to be found in the margins of “the chat”.
One debate we could have had (since the actuaries kept bringing things back to gilts-plus-a-half) concerns the partial disconnect between the Occupational Pension Schemes (Scheme Funding) Regulations 2005 and TPR’s Code.
Yes, the actuaries mentioned a “bespoke” alternative but for whatever reason chose to put no examples before the assembled participants.