I am not sure what this little video or a badly played under-sized violin is saying? Is it ironic or simply inept?

Gallagher is an  insurance brokerage rather like Aon and Marsh Mac and Howden and Willis Towers Watson which is necessarily facing the insurance industry and annuities rather than asset management and pensions.

So when a pension consultancy falls, I would expect tiny violins to be played by the insurance brokers for that falling pension consultancy. In this case, where First Actuarial has just been snapped up,  Gallagher has recently bought out Redington, Buck and AHC . Gallagher has captured a lot of actuaries and they’re now pointing not at pensions but insurance.

I am a sad fellow and I would like a lament for what has been lost, a fine partnership.

Instead, we get a woo-hoo from Mark Williams which suggests we should be “woo-hoo-ing” with him. First Actuarial were a genuinely independent pension consultancy , it is no more.

There aren’t many primarily pensions pointing pension consultancies left. You might think of LCP at the top end , but they’re partially earned by private equity as is Broadstone at the bottom end. Barnett Waddingham sold to the American private equity owned insurance broker held Howden earlier this year, dear Alexander Forbes went to Broadstone and American Lockton a decade ago

PWC and the other privately owned consultancies have a lot of actuaries but I don’t think you judge them by the number of actuaries  (the most) but by the range of services they advise on. They are a corporate pension adviser.

While I have a lot of goodwill to LCP and to teams all over the pension consultancies, I can only point now at Hymans Robertson as a genuine actuarial-led pension  partnership that is not pointing towards insurance.

So I am not playing an ill-sized violin ineptly or ironically. I am genuinely sorry for First Actuarial’s staff (who own some of my company’s equity). Their Founders are of an age to want to be out. The money is on the side of the American insurance brokers and First Actuarial are part of one. The market must now pay the same prices and get the same services as they would if they were with almost anybody else.

The homogenisation of the consultancy marketing advising DB pension funds and their sponsors is as small as that violin and sadly sounding as inept and ironic.

Diversity is reducing, there is precious little independent thinking. First Actuarial should get an ode of joy for what it has done in twenty years. We must play a proper tune and I mean by those who believe in pensions not annuities.

Which is why sponsors who are keen to have pension schemes and not be a feeder to Bermudan insurance companies (and their likes) had better put two fingers up to the noise of the American owned insurance brokers with a lot of actuaries but not a lot of interest in carrying on DB pensions.

There is of course an alternative. There are enough independent pension consultants/actuaries in LCP , and an unpurchased firm in Hymans Robertson to suggest that we can hope to see pension mutuals continuing to sprout. These will have to be driven primarily by sponsors of pensions and by organisations that can bring smaller employers together.

That kind of organisation may attract the right kind of minds who have genuinely independent thinking both as purchasers of actuarial consultancy services and to provide them. Of course I am thinking of the future of pensions into the 22nd century as well as the bulk of the 21st because, believe it or not, some of the people coming into our workforces now will be alive and needing retirement income in 2100 and beyond.

So a big an imperious sound from this blog to drown out the inept or ironic sound coming from those who would drown out the beautiful sound with a tiny violin.