There will be many laughing at this headline that tops an interview with our Lord Mayor King.
But when you look at the companies that have assembled to back him up, you notice a few who specialise in delivering VFM to companies
The 696th Lord Mayor made the comments as he prepared to announce a new “employers pension pledge” on Tuesday in his annual Mansion House speech.
Under the pledge, 15 companies have agreed to make a public declaration to focus on net returns rather than costs when picking their defined contribution (DC) pension provider and to request more transparency on private market allocations.
Among the signatories are Tesco, NatWest Group, Standard Chartered, Aviva, Legal and General, Schroders, Samworth Brothers, London Stock Exchange Group, Octopus Group, Phoenix Group and Aberdeen.
This is of course what the Pension Minister has been saying and it’s what this blog has been saying since AgeWage was started 7 years ago.
We need our saving into pensions to pay pensions and I’ve written extensively over the past few days because I am turning up the heat on value – we need more value to get higher lifetime incomes than we get from annuities.
I’m glad that King is turning to employers – even if some of them are City employers with both feet in the game – providers and customers!
Actually there is good reason to get out of the race to the bottom that has happened over the past ten years as workplace saving schemes have fallen in cost but not introduced anything by way of “pensions”.
The result of the price war has been to send savings money to index trackers conforming to the axion that “diversification is a free lunch“. The companies that should be receiving investment – including those companies on Alistair King’s list, have been starved of it – most of all from pensions. Here’s from the FT
The move is the latest part of the government’s attempt to push British pension schemes to invest more in assets to boost UK’s sluggish economy, arguing it would improve investment returns in the process.
Under a voluntary commitment called the Mansion House accord signed in May, 17 of the UK’s largest DC workplace pension providers have pledged to invest at least 5 per cent of their assets in UK private markets by 2030, provided the assets were sufficiently attractive.
King said he wanted UK DC pension providers to invest more like those in Australia which allocate 14 per cent of their assets to private equity and infrastructure, according to think-tank New Financial, compared with 4 per cent for British DC schemes.
I’ve complained that King looked worried at the Chancellor when she spoke at the Mansion House last November
I hope that we see more of the Mayor who posed for the FT for this interview with a more determined look
