Two important plenaries; the first a Pensions Commission for a New Age
The message was in the title, this is not about finishing the job needed twenty years ago, Drake and Pearce made it clear that this is a new Britain and not necessarily a better on. We are a nation that has suffered a financial crisis, a Brexit and a Covid pandemic and between PS1 and PS2 has been very little growth in our economy, our wages and our sense that we will have the retirement we had hoped for.
Both Drake and Pearce made it clear that the context in which they will work is different and this will not present a solution where private pensions are the sole focus.
To Steve Webb’s political question , Drake responded that there was no political answer, there will be nothing to implement from this Commission within this political cycle. What is decided will be from 2030 and will not be a new fiscal solution for pensions, not a conclusion of the unfortunate 2017 recommendations on contribution increases and not a rehash of the state pension review that is going on concurrently.
My takeaway is that we should leave Drake and Pearce and Ian Cheshire to get their act together, Q1 2025 we will have more than the Terms of Reference , we will have an outline of what will be delivered after a lot of data has been analysed.
Which leads us into the second plenary at the end of the day which turned into a discussion about what three key figures in workplace pensions thought should be delivered by PC2!
The title of their fire chat discussion was “finishing the job; Improving Adequacy in the Pension System” and despite Pensions UK for a 12% of salary contribution to workplace pensions , the chat was not about that. Instead it was about the affordability of pension deductions for many savers.
While Jo Segars has history campaigning at one moment for the unions, another for the ABI and finally for the NAPF/PLSA, Dean and Heath-Lay don’t. There was a lot of interest in each other’s views and a surprising convergence.
As I hope you can make out by the shot above, what was said was listened to not just by the panel but by a packed hall of pension specialists.
It was as if they had been listening to Drake and Pearce. If we had expected a trade show, we were disappointed , we got a discussion between three pension people (and an economist) about how a fairer society can emerge from our pension system.
There was a buzz in the Conference Exchange Hall and in the Exhibition between. There are more people here but less purchasers, Pension UK as Julian Mund’s opening remarks made clear, is a commercially serious outfit. The Pension Commission and those that followed it, showed that it can still put its heart on display. This made for an interesting day.