Nick “the bush” Chadha
I was surprised and pleased to find Nick the Bush on the VFM podcast this week.
This podcast has taken a turn for the better this year with a string of guests who are prepared to talk about pensions rather than pots. I got a bit of gip from Claire Altman last week for saying she did not sound very comfortable with selling bulk and individual annuities. I am every bit an admirer of her work as a trustee at Smart as of Nick’s work at Stagecoach and I hope that we will find a way forward that doesn’t pitch insurance against pensions as they are today.
I mention this because the Stagecoach pension scheme was heading to insurance buy in/out and passed across the desks of Standard Life’s BPA executive. But the trustees were pretty adamant they wanted to keep going with the £200m surplus being spent on pensioners.
Nick is “the bush” to everyone and I’ve no idea why, but he’s playing a straight bat as actuary, trustee, scheme secretary and other matters financial on this pod.
It is no surprise that the pod went on for 77 minutes as the Bush was loquacious and if you follow what happens when a DB pension scheme wants to be innovative, you’re going to want to listen to all 77 minutes. I am going back for a second listen today!
To call the transfer of the Stagecoach DB scheme to Aberdeen and away from Stagecoach PLC “innovative” may be a bit too much for those who run who want to run pension superfunds. To quote one CEO, “you wonder what a superfund is for“.
Nick tells the boys that he is in no doubt that such transfers will be followed by other schemes swapping sponsors. To have followed a superfund’s labour to get authorised, makes the sight of an employer collecting DB schemes as Aberdeen has, “surprising“.
This is not good news for insurers either. There are some big targets baked into a lot of insurance companies and having seen off the challenge of the Pension Superfunds, they had thought that they had created in Clara, a bridge to buy-out. But here is a new threat.
This may sound like economic politics but for members it is very personal. Nick the Bush uses this opportunity to explain to the actuaries and actuarially minded what is going on. But there is in this Inverness born, Edinburgh educated and general lad about town style someone you can believe does “town hall” meetings with members.
As for the podcast, it is a fascinating listen and Nico and Darren seem to have turned a corner, now interviewing people who give back everything that they get by way of actuarial and pension expertise. Together with the pods of Kim Gubler and “Red” Rory Murphy, we have new perspectives on pensions rather than pots and a new view of Value for Money.
Claire Altman argued that VFM was in the eye of the member, but we have seen in all four of these latest podcasts a focus on retirement income. I suspect that value for money is in the eyes of our two hosts , allied with Robin Ellison’s estimation of what the FCA and TPR are offering us on VFM – a ‘flagship of absurdity’.
Listening to the ever polite and friendly Nick the Bush Chadha, I get the impression his views on DC (not given) would tally with Ellison’s estimate of VFM – a “masterpiece of dross”.
