Next week – 14th-16th October to be precise, we will be in Manchester for the above. “We means pension scheme members of Pensions UK (already PUK to some) , people selling to them and journalists.

This year’s conference aims to get us ready for pensions in five years time. We all know the challenge laid down to it by Government over the summer. I don’t suppose that many Conferences have such a simple and clear aim, nor a greater responsibility to those who attend and those who don’t.

I think I have been coming since 1995 which would make this 30 years but I’ve missed a few along the way.  One year I set up a stall in the lobby and got booted out by the NAPF commercial director.

Fringe event a few years back

I am now a journalist for the three days and grateful to PUK for tolerating me.

My first observation is that the Conference App is worth spending some time on. I have found 66 of the 100 or so “areas of interest”- of interest to me. I assume that this will nudge me to people like me and yes – there is an AI suggestion pool which you can explore. The AI nudge can help you  find out who you should be meeting.  It gives you a way of connecting with them, messaging them and sending them meeting instructions.

If you aren’t wanting to meet anyone at the Conference, you can manage that by sitting in sessions and not attending the Exhibition Hall and staying clear of dinners you’ll be invited to. Everyone is supposed to go to the dinner on the second night (Wednesday) and earlier year a naughty company shipped off some prize investment delegates to a boat in Edinburgh. You will now have to pay Pension UK  fine if you don’t turn up if you said you would to the big party! This meets with my approval. I’m sure you can cancel in advance if you cannot bear the dinner or make it.

There are clearly a lot of people going and my guess, having worked the app over the weekend is that this is less fiduciary and more commercial than ever. At what point does a professional trustee stop being “fiduciary” and start being “commercial” – a tricky one, many of the professional trustee firms provide secretarial services and increasingly they are competing with consultancies who most definitely are regarded as commercial. The larger professional trustee bodies are seldom owned by their partners, nowadays they tend to be owned by private equity – I don’t call private equity a fiduciary model.

There gets a point when those on the buy side and those on the sell side are so mixed up that the original aim of the National Association of Pension Funds  to represent schemes has disappeared and Pensions UK is an industry trade body looking after several trillion pounds of money – destined to pay pensions over the years to come.

There are speakers but they no longer define the Conference. There are an awful lot of them, some who have paid to speak, some who speak because of expertise but the big speeches will come from politicians – most especially Torsten Bell – the Pensions Minister. It makes sense to make a plan about who you see, you get a nudge if you’ve told your app what your interests are but you can see most people wandering the meeting room section making their minds up as they go along.

A lot of familiar faces – many more on the full list!

Many people will only go to the key speeches. Three years ago, this Conference took place as the LDI crisis was at its peak, we were in Liverpool and I was speaking on one of these key sessions.

Bell at the investment conference in Edinburgh

I don’t think we will have another such crisis between now and Tuesday but we have a Pension Minister who is a good speaker and has plenty to talk about.

This is an industry event and it has ridden all the changes that have occurred over the 30 years I’ve been going. I suspect it is on the up and will continue to do so. It no longer has the interest from broadcast media and the national press it once had. I suspect to meet the trade press and the FT covering the event. Which is why I take the privilege of being considered a financial reporter seriously.

Of course there will be humour throughout but underpinning this event are the commercial and fiduciary considerations which give it value. It is important that the fiduciary value does not disappear, pensions are for people who don’t come to these events and they need to be considered first. but pensions is a trade that needs a body to represent it. Pensions is a trade that needs a body to represent it. Much as I teased the NAPF and PLSA, I recognise the body represented us.  It has earned the title Pensions UK .