Richard Smith’s explanation of his conversation with us in October has emerged on social media.

This ties in with comments from Bobby Riddaway on the thinking of many people in our industry which assumes that everyone is engaged and competent at managing their retirement finances.

The most amazing stories come my way. The story of how 6000 employers have established workplace pensions for their staff in conjunction with HMRC payroll and Collegia , the Oxford/Brazilian workplace scheme.

The story of people like Richard spending much of the last ten years helping develop functionality that will allow people to see their pension entitlements in one place.

These are based on technology we could not have dreamt of at the start of auto-enrolment in 2012.

It is now to start thinking of how we can turn “saving” to pensions and how we can move from a “pot” culture to a culture where the pension – a regular income increasing by pension till you did, is what we save for.

We are all in this together, CDC will arrive in the same wave of innovation that brings us the dashboard. Alternatives to CDC will be available as default ways to spend money in workplace pensions and opt-outs will remain for those who want to treat savings as “wealth”.

I suspect that 2026 will be a year of testing and 2027 a year of delivery, but the bright people such as Richard Smith are that year ahead of us all.

Richard