What’s happened? How quickly the summer’s gone away.

The first 10 minutes of a 50 minute podcast involves informing each other and the digital listeners with babies, Cornwall and memories of the summer. This is not supposed to be a podcast about wars and reform and politics , but this one is.

Angela Raynor and the Labour Party come in for a hard time, she was the shadow pensions minister a long time ago. Her parliamentary record reminds us she succeeded Gregg McClymont.

Angela, working class like Gregg McClymont! Shows you what can happen with careers. Do you see Angela in financial services lads?

Talking of which , we  get the news of a wider job for Nico (pulling together BNY as a pensions force). BNY are the dominant force as I try to get home to my pad in Friar St behind their office. They are a stalwart of the Shaw’s Booksellers , their second office.

And we get news of a new podcast about an at least once a month chat about industry matters (gossip). There are going to be two meetings with guests.  The news dominating the previous 100+ podcasts is going to be toned down.  The future podcasts will be more about guests than their people’s attitudes to news.

Now we learn that there are going to be more conference type podcasts discussing ESG, fiduciary duties, decumulation and other things in acronyms and polysyllables like communication and (keeping it simple) – Richard Smith on “dashboards“. Richard is interesting and kind but he’s got some strong views on the customer testing of dashboards. Get him going lads!

“Interesting and kind” makes me a definite non-starter on this show, but in as much as this podcast has interest to “people“, then I will keep listening.

I’m not actually sure that anyone reads me when I try to be nice.  An odd features of blogs is the nastier you are –  the more interesting you seem to be – not sure about pods but Count Binface is a model I’d follow!

Pension Commission and PC2

Unsurprisingly, this podcast gets lift-off when Pension Commission 2 (PC2) rises out of the gossip.

PC2 brings us to “adequacy” after half an hour. Mention is made of La-La wastes of times. We are of course entering well over a year of “interim reports”

Sadly the terms of reference for the pension commission does not let every ocean be boiled, (though obviously climate change could).

It should be noted by the podcasters that I have not been a signatory of the Playmates on its letter, I am a conscientious objector to La La Land.

I have other things to do, like making a living trying to help people get value for money.

How have we managed?

How we have managed without the podcast over the summers I don’t know. We have the state pension review going on in tandem with PC2, but there isn’t a big enough pitch for all the players so many balls are going to be lost in long-grass.

There will , in these guy’s opinion, be too long to wait till 26th November but pension tax-changes are likely to arrive before PC2 – in 18 (17 now) months time. So should we have two budgets as part of the Pension Commission? PC2 is of course a nice way of kicking adequacy into another Government’s purlieu.

There is a lot of political stuff to chew over for the next few weeks discussing Rachel Reeves’ options to nationalise the debt of all kinds of things. There will be plenty for the podcast to talk about as interim reports come out every so often, it will be just like the good old days.

So an enormous amount of podcast fodder for 17 months, the Commissioners are a bit Labour-centric for Darren, not giving the opportunity for a consensus from the business world (presumably the ABI).

My delight over the past few weeks is that I haven’t had to be worried about PC2.  I fear that we will now stop worrying about getting pensions for pots so that we can go for a consensus about auto-enrolment contribution scales. Total diversion if you ask me.

A podcast for Government?

Or maybe that’s what the Pension Minister wants. Could this commission be  a resurrection of the 2017 AE reforms. Could they be part of PC2

We left podcasts for the summer with a former conservative pension minister- the founder of auto-enrolment (ahem!) . Should we have Guy Opperman back? The lads launch a number of contentions and questions that will be politically disruptive. Richard Tice might like to be interviewed!

Tice as he appears on social media

“The consumer still doesn’t know what is going on when they come to getting their pension” .

“Maybe we ought to have compulsory financial education before you can get your hands on your pot or get paid a pension?”

“We haven’t designed what good should look like”

“We don’t have the legal policy of safe harbour”

“Mandation on funds , fiduciary duties impaired and LGPS”

A weekly topic for the podcast could be to discuss  if  the mess is  “planned conspiracy” or “Government cock-up”. Somehow I don’t see Torsten Bell wanting to come on this podcast. 

If the Podcast wants to find out what was discussed at the General Commission of the Pension Schemes Bill, they can read my encyclopedia and find out what was said at the evidence session by watching the videos (even in France).

The podcast ends with  “we will have an FCA VFM consultation later this year” – maybe the FCA will come on the VFM podcast.

Is this  a politics free podcast? It’ll be interesting how that promise holds in the months to come!