In Louise Farrand we have a communication superstar. This wrap up of every country’s pension system compared against each other through the DCIF podcast is well worth listening to.

Mark Austin speaks with Louise through 45 minutes of adventures with people around the world. You can pick off the individual pods you want to hear using this link

They kicked off the review with Steve Webb telling DCIF that Britain had the difficulty of  having a pensions history that made things hard to change. He comes back to this with CDC later on.

New Zealand, through Diane Maxwell,  is a tale of the Kiwis using their pension pots as bank accounts. Britain’s Annuity-purchasing was admired by Kiwis till Osborne took mandation of annuities away.

Mark Iwry in the USA says that there is just too much choice for employees, they are being given  choices  to protect employers from being sued by them for denying access to an investment product.  He admired Britain for having defaults and being bolder in making investments work by means of then. Louise could not see how the American culture and Federal system would allow things to change,

Hans van Meerten from the Netherlands told DCIF there was much that could be learned from the Netherlands on how CDC should be implemented in the UK (for workplace pensions). He said it  should be clear of the options and the best way how to decide on an investment , I am not sure that this is  something that would go down very well with CDC (or Dutch CDC for that matter). Clearly all is not well between parties in the Netherlands.

Webb, as mentioned above, told the DCIF that a target pension called CDC is a better deal than an annuity (for a Royal Mail postman). He sees other large employers wanting to get back into CDC.

Webb seems on the same page as Torsten Bell on decumulation. Flex now and fix later was an idea of LCP’s that appears to have been worked out some time ago by Nest. Whose idea flex and fix is is unclear!

Webb is pretty clear that members have no part in Mansion House though taking the consequences of investing in the UK and private markets.

The Australian Paul Watson spoke about Australia and how we see it as “Super” by name and nature.  Watson pointed out that despite having a good way of building up pots, they hadn’t found a way to get people spending them as pensions. The Australian system is not getting a way of dealing with everyone getting the basics right.  Watson has a lot to say about the massive home bias in Australia because of “franking credits” which give them tax breaks by investing in Australians stocks and bonds.

Farrand says that Keith Ambachtsheer from Canada about what is going right; he told her that pensions are about lifetime income, it’s what they have in Canada but it’s not in Australia. Things are going well when people understand DC decumulation, but they can’t call it DC because it’s a pension!  He calls them DC occupational pension plan. Boy did this resonate with me!

Then there is Ireland’s Jerry Moriarty. His country’s impending  changes are 25 years old and poor old Jerry has been in Ireland all that time watching what is and now has happened in the UK. There hasn’t been the will in Ireland for things to happen – there’s always been a reason not to.

VFM is varied and in many other countries, skill not scale is the way towards getting VFM. Smaller schemes with skill rather than scale should be allowed to carry on says Mark on his observation.

Then there is Mats Langensjö in Sweden who offers a view on the importance of independent insight. Sweden is seen as a system working very well by everyone I know who knows! What ended up in 2017 was a scrapping of much of the national funds platform and replace them with better managers, better pricing and more institutional management. There are 40 people in charge of the Government system of fund governance which has “evolved into something quite good”.

Then finally the DCIF had a meeting with Bjorn Asgrimsson in Iceland, with lots of things for Louise and Mark to take away. Pension Funds in Iceland make housing loans to everyone living in Iceland. This is something that has been going on since the 1980s with the pension funds competing with the banks. The land of fire is the land of bricks and mortar.

I enjoyed this compilation, I didn’t go for the earlier pods who were covered, I will do now. I have a funny feeling I want to go back to Iceland on a fishing boat with the Icelandic guy. I used to work there in the early 1980s and I’d have a better pension if I had a stayed (typically 75% of pre-retirement income).

Thanks Mark and Louise and the DCIF. This is the most interesting  thing I’ve heard recently –  it’s called “changing world- new opportunities”