We are encountering a new mini-industry within the pension industry, a sub-section of the marketing industry, the “marking” industry. Of course it has nothing to do with “industry” at all, it has everything to do with draining money from organisations that would be better off spending it on “2027, 2029 or 2030” the various target dates on the “Roadmap”.

I am not into Reform’s attack on LGPS at egregious but I think it has brought Reform upon itself by its plethora of award-winning events.

But LGPS is as nothing to the pension companies endless efforts to compete with each other to win prizes on hocus-pocus rating services which result in dinners where people have a little too much to drink and collapse in expensive hotel rooms to take the following day off.

Doesn’t the possibility of  heaping on themselves the revulsion of Reform , give this kind of ostentatious display, a place on the risk register?

I am sorry to see that to get close to the Benefits Guru ratings and how “gold medals” were awarded, I have to go through a registration process that will end no doubt in my having to fork out to read the blurb

This kind of nonsense has to stop. It has nothing to do with “industry” and everything to do with “marketing” and it comes as no surprise that all 7 gold medal winners and in particular the triple gold medal winners are deep-pocketed providers of financial services.

What we need is a trusted service run by organisations that rate on data and provide not just value for those paying for the data but value for the money saved by those who don’t.

I was with such an organisation yesterday. They had bothered to come into central London to their offices in the rain and on a transport free day because that is what they do- always have done for the twenty years I’ve known them. I won’t embarrass them by naming them on this blog because that would be to risk putting them in the rubbish pot.

The future of these phoney “gurus” is dependent on a carousel of award winning which allows a new top winner every year and the opportunity for marketing departments to have hope. Of course every participant gets a loser’s gold medal so there’s no disgrace in not being Standard Life this year.

I suspect the time has come for a step back by journalists from this over-loaded marketing sub-section. There is an important job to be done and that is to get millions of savers- pensions. Get serious about that before patting yourselves on the back for not doing so!