A great career and it’s not over at 64!

The week beginning 10th November will be an odd one for me.

Work

Today and every day I will be thinking about the fabulous things that are happening in UK pensions. My desk is full of numbers and thoughts on how we can improve the outputs of our saving, our pensions, through collective investment and social insurance. I am thinking of the whole of life “UMES” CDC model and the Retirement CDC and hoping that these will change workplace retirement savings to meet the challenge of inadequate contributions.

Memories of work that failed

This time last year I was writing out a business plan for the Pension SuperHaven, an attempt to turn DC pots to DB pensions with the help of a large loan from a British bank. It could have done quite something had the capital backed structure found favor with the authorities, but it didn’t.

On the 15th November 2024, riding across Southwark Bridge Road, I was clipped from behind by an electric bike and had two haemorrhages of  my brain. I was saved thanks to the NHS and my family and by Christmas I was out of hospital, but it was too late, the momentum on the  Pension SuperHaven project had been lost and while I slowly recovered in the early months of this year, I struggled and so did PSH.

In May it became clear that the Government agreed with our executive that Britain needed pensions not pots as its default retirement payment structure. I was delighted but it soon became clear that the way forward with the DWP was not to revive Defined Benefit with capital backing. The chosen was was CDC , a lite version of pensions without DB’s guarantees but with an inflation linked pension promise.

PSH is being dismantled and the capital that had been destined to be a capital buffer to offer certainty will now be a capital reserve for the Proprietors of the commercial organisations that will offer CDC of distinct types. It has been necessary to take thinking from delivery through one vision to delivery through another.

Drink free – prostate free

Until November 14th last year, I drank a lot, since the crash and the brain damage I have not had a drop of alcohol. This has been my saving at a physical, my family, friends and faith have kept me going in recovery.

Today I am preparing to go into hospital drink free and hopeful that some of the remaining physical issues I have will be resolved in UCH tomorrow.

Tomorrow is coincidentally armistice day, armistice hour is the hour of my birth (11 am) and that is the hour of my admittance. There will be a little less of me by the end of the day but I’m looking forward to it! Thanks to the NHS and the six hospitals I have spent time with.

When I’m 64.

Tomorrow I will be 64. My friend Clare Reilly teaches her children that 64 is 8×8, it means different things to different folks. To me it is a hope of the Beatles in their twenties that they will get old enough to relax with a partner, I guess I have made it and will be happy to wake up tomorrow morning and make my way to the Westmoreland unit of UCH.

My long term project is AgeWage, I started it in 2018 with Chris Sier, it has been a tough time for Chris and he lost his life struggle with his colon’s cancer last Sunday. We had the same vision and some of my renewed vigour is for him and his wife who becomes the second largest shareholder in AgeWage.

Optimism for 2026 and 2027

Not much will be delivered in 2026 for UMES. The Church of England and the 700 employers in its pension umbrella will , I hope be ready to go and maybe will start at the end of next year. The Pensions Trust have stated their intention, good for them  (but please less marketing through Trustees guys).

There will be others, I hope AgeWage will be a part of one, delivering pensions through collective defined contribution workplace schemes (or UMES as I’m supposed to call them). In some time in later years we will have Retirement CDCs. Value for Money will govern how these pensions are monitored, I have been looking at VFM through the measurement of the value of pots for the contributions made to get the pots! We are having to adjust – it is not the pots but the pensions.

Pots to Pensions

It is over 40 years since I started selling financial services through insurance and the financial security of saving. Then I sold with little supervision and found out what worked through the tough school of what we even then called “financial planning”.

Forty years on , I am still a salesman, this time selling financial security but still through (social) insurance and (collective) investment.

In 1984 we thought we would not be working in 2025, me and my 20 something sales team. I still see some of them, Trevor Levy, Damola Abiola, Eamonn O’Connor were there forty years ago.

But I’ve been lucky to keep going and have the things I cherish most. I will drink a glass of non-alcoholic stuff to my readers, clients and supporters as we all move forwards!

For Chris Sier