This is not an investment conference but that didn’t stop Jon Handford – a consultant  of Aon’s and Gareth Hayes  Ernst and Young’s assistant pension director discussing how E&Y had got where they are on investment and how the audience should participate.

Hayes is a cricketer and he bowled out Aon balls to crowd members who gave their opinion. Some balls were dropped, the one that came to me was rather luckily caught and gave me courage.

We had been asked what we wanted from the DC investment strategy and I’d said “Value for Money” because that’s all I think we can expect from the management of our savings before we or the fiduciary converts the pot into a pension. Other suggestions included “glidepath”, “diversification” and “suitability”, all the usual stuff we are taught to think and Aon’s Handford gave excellent explanations for all the suggestions from the crowd – apart from me.

I expected him to engage with how savers could know if they were getting VFM and listened intently till at last Jon told us he’d dealt with all the suggestions – but he hadn’t!

So like the old fashioned git that I am, I forsook the app and Slido and stuck my hand up insisting that as a 60+ I don’t have the first clue about the value I’ve got for my money. Have I done better, worse or line with what other people who’ve saved have done?

There was an embarrassed answer from the speakers who clearly had no intention of talking beyond the usual questions and no answer to my question. I speak now as a saver who will be relying on my savings (coincidentally on the same investment platform as E&Ys).

What gets reported as “investing for an adequate retirement” is a load of pie charts and graphs showing why the default invested as it did but no explanation of how savers at E&Y when they were invested in a GPP set up by E&Y or the Master trust they have switched to, Has it been a success? Are E&Y savers the better off for it. I have relations who are in the E&Y DC pension arrangements and I’d like to have reported on how they were likely to have done as a result of all the work of Jon and  Gareth,

It is a little unfair to ask awkward questions but I was not the only one. The savers who come to the end of their working lives have only to look back at what has happened, those who are in their middle age can look back and forward and youngsters just forward but we all want to know what investing for an adequate retirement means.

We need to be meaningful to our audiences and find ways to report to them on the VFM they are getting as a result of our efforts. I hope that by giving the feedback that I did , I can help Jon and Gareth think more about what their savers want and need to know!

But please don’t give up on bowling balls into the hall, I can’t think of a better way to getting your audience involved!