A rather gloomy backdrop to Tim Fassam’s pronouncements!

The link to this conversation is here. 

It starts at 15,30 and finishes abruptly at 15.45. It gives us an insight into the workings of lobbying, but does not quite answer the questions that either the committee or the public who were there and are able to watch what were being said  by video are interested in.

Tim Fassam of Phoenix (Standard Life) came to talk to Parliament’s General Committee, about Phoenix and in particular what it wants from the Pension Schemes Bill. He is an articulate advocate of Phoenix’s heritage and of its view of what “value for money” means.

This 15 minute session is one that focusses on how people’s money is invested and what they get from that investment. Interestingly, Fassam represents the conversation about VFM to the long meeting in a short talk. His position on  VFM is measured going forward and begs the question, “why has no one known what happened to their money in the past?”

The conversation quickly moves into ratings and the publication of ratings which can bring bad news for those who get “intermediate” ratings (eg – the ratings that could lead to a downward spiral of a fund manager or platform so being eaten up in consolidation). It might also lead to all commercial players herding towards the middle so as to stay safer, rather than deliver value.

Phoenix are questioned with a lot of interest on their submission on the Pension Schemes Bill. Looking for an extension of the scope of consolidation, in other words for Phoenix to “eat up an elephant”. It is interesting how much engagement there is between the Committee and Phoenix – engagement which was not present in other places, suggesting a lot of lobbying has been going on this space.

There was to end his short session, a call for a chance for investment in private assets to be discussed but is brutally cut short by the Chair. An example I fear of too much being about Phoenix and not enough about “what the Bill should be doing”. We will for ever want to know what point Tim Fassam would have made about the need for more capital to invest in private markets.

More generally, we might have expected an insurer (which Phoenix is, despite its joint venture with Schroders to deliver private market assets to workplace pensions)  to have brought with it-  the ABI;   who might have been the 24th of the 23 organisations to attend this day of interrogations.

We may never know why the ABI weren’t the other half of this session and why the other 15 minutes was never used but for all that, the short session shows just what the MP Committee wanted to focus, specifically whether value for money could be measured and whether organisations not delivering it, could be allowed to continue to participate in the commercial pension schemes. This is clearly a matter that we will want to hear more from the insurers and their trade body (as no doubt the well-briefed Committee had been).

By comparison we hear in detail from CEOs of  People’s Partnership (now distanced from its insurance parent) and Nest. It will no doubt remain one of those mysteries , this sub-section of commercial providers were so under- represented.