If you want to hear what Rachel Reeves said and didn’t say in her Mansion House speech, you can watch it on yesterday’s blog which includes access to what the Treasury posted on Linked in (the lot).

Muna Abdi was but one journalist reporting on frustration that Reeves had not focussed on the second part of the reform of pensions – adequacy.

Mansion House speech signals pensions reform but omits phase 2 review: industry reaction

This is crazy! We have not properly got to grips with bringing value for money to decumulation so that we get proper pensions from our savings. Can we please get the Pension Schemes Bill to Pension Schemes Act before we start on the great mandation that the pension providers, fund and asset managers demand?

The pension albatross around company’s necks has been the 2017 AE reforms which were due to arrive the middle of this decade. They haven’t – the middle was a few days ago and we’ve got different obligations, obligations to pay pensions not pots, we are not Australia – we do not have the same overt contribution rate but we have a state and benefits system that gives us higher income in retirement as a replacement ration – than is achieved in Australia- I have the numbers from Andy Young and will blog when appropriate. Now is not the time to talk about “Phase 2” – thanks for not doing so Rachel.

We are a couple of months into coping with new national insurance payments. They are hurting AgeWage as they will be larger and smaller companies, employers cannot be doing with more costs mandated on them and if we are moaning about mandation in other areas, can we please leave it out for employers. There is nothing stopping companies paying more into the workplace pensions voluntarily, many do pay much more than they have to , even as the smallest of SMEs, we choose to pay as much as we can by means of a contract with staff that the employer will pay their contributions. It seems to work, staff are happy and we keep our NI bills done. Shouldn’t we be happy with the options available? Can we really swallow more bitter pills at a time when we are digesting national insurance increases?

Reading the range of reactions in the press I was amazed. The worry that reform is not arriving just yet on equity and cash ISAs, concern over LTAs, endless debates over the backstop on investment in UK equities, especially our private markets and the self-importance fiduciary duties offer the vain.

I think that the pension aspect of the Pension Schemes Bill and the impact it will have on the number of providers offering commercial pensions has been underestimated. I think that the implications of “value for money” on smaller DC pension schemes will be immense and the pension industry should be thinking very hard about how it delivers pensions to millions of DC savers. So far I have only seen Nest make a clear statement of what it is going to do and very sound its thinking is.

I hope that the discussions we have over the next few months are not about the extraction of money from corporate bank accounts so that DC pensions become as much a burden as DB plan have been (until recently). Lay off  employers and lay off the payslip deductions on savers. Give employers and their staff good news about the workplace pensions they are in , in time for the dashboards they’ll have access to in little more than a year.

100% invested, 100% secure should be the motto of those who want savers to have fully invested pensions that are as secure as pensions have become. Let’s get that job done before “phase 2- adequacy” kicks in.