Steve Simkins referred to what he does at Isio as supporting public services, he means more than LGPS but care and social housing schemes for which he competes with PWC and First Actuarial. I hadn’t realised it but the department of Garth Foster and Christophor (no typo) Ward – GAD – also has a public services division and they represented it from the funding and investment respective.
What is unique about this LGPS conference is the balance between its three themes – funding , investment and administration.
It was good to be sitting in on Artemis’ discussion on why to invest in small British companies and be joined by West Midlands’ Rachel Brothwood , talking about local investment in the Birmingham area. In the room included Bath and Somerset’s Nick Dixon discussing and comparing how to research individual propositions. This was the meat and two vegs of investment debated with good humour but intensity. How different it is to be at the cutting edge of decisions and to understand investing in Britain in such a critical time for pensions.
It was great to have GAD actuaries asking to sit down what you were interested in. I had put out a question to most at the event about turning pots to pensions and Garth and Christopher explained to me the process of decision making at LGPS to improve the lot of first year joiners wanting to consolidate into retirement income.
But to me, the highlights of the day were about admin. A session in the morning asked about the capacity and benefit of LGPS to integrate with the Pension Dashboard and it gve me an insight into PPPA which looks after 700,000 people’s pension entitlements.
Instead of running from the mad journo that I undoubtedly am, Abigail Leech of PPA found me out and spent 40 minutes explaining what can be done to give members a better experience of pension. Talk about VFM, here it was in action and that talk and the one with Garth will stay with me.
Abigail Leech
Of course there had been less successful moments of the day, me walking into the round table of Mayors uninvited and getting told to bugger off for good reason – sorry mayors.
I was very disappointed not to get to the plenary chaired by my friend Neil Mason (PLSA gave me a room for that hour to run our PlayPen talk on CDC which includes a plug for LGPS as an aministrator . For anyone who wants to know what we get up to in private land- the video in the link is good.
Although a great session on digital advances, the session chaired by Dave Coplin (a full wizard of an innovator) and featuring Vicky Jenks of Shropshire enabled me to embarass myself! We had a great discussion of vulnerability but I had to admit to be being vulnerable myself, I hope that as with the Mayors, I will be forgotten for my naivety.
We have one more day and there will be one more blog. I hope that I have fulfilled my job as a “freelance journalist”. I am not sure I qualify for the title but as the only male in the media room I (for once) feel I bring a little diversity for age and sex!
