The meeting of insurers , master trust providers , lawyers , administrators and technicians yesterday was carried out as a “Red Button” operation. To me that means a commitment for change. It did not result in change though there were some good contributions in over three hours of discussion suggesting it was time to stop talking and start doing.

I can’t say what was said by who because it was done under Chantry House rules. Nor did I ever feel emotionally attached to the discussion because the problem with small pots is with providers who have to pay levies on small pots that are bigger than the amount they can make on them.

If there is going to be a way out of this problem led by the consumers , it will follow the publication of people’s various holdings on the pensions dashboards and an outcry from those with small pots about the difficulty of moving money around the system (a problem that will not go away by the FCA introducing further layers of protection to stop “member detriment”.

Against change we have trustees who will look at the interests of individuals before the interests of the provider, we will see lawyers who will debate the issues at the expense of their clients – the providers and we will have the lurking presence of the regulators (who were not at this meeting).

So although there were providers at the Red Button event at solicitors CMS, I could not see an easy timeline forward unless two or three of them set off to swap small pots to big pots through a small pots club determined to break a deadlock which has carried on at least twelve years.

This is not me being cynical, not even sceptical. It is being practical. There will not be change unless people stop obeying the rules that have been created to protect everyone but don’t.

There was a good moment when a senior figure of a life company talked of “wallowing in the complexity of the problem”. Another called out “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”, but whatever the pre-prepared catchphrases (that cannot be attributed), they were lost in the air-conditioned corridors of a major lawyer.

I am an outsider to this. I left a life company in 2005 more than 20 years ago, we were discussing this issue at Zurich/Eagle Star back then. Those who want change – outside the providers are saints. There is very little in it for Sam and Graeme Seaton

There was very little for me or those in the audience who gave up 2-6pm to discuss this issue. Most of all I take my hat off to Andy Cheseldine, Kim Gubler and Maurice Titley who have done so much to keep the light flickering. I congratulate Chris Curry and the PPI for the huge but fruitless Data Project that gave us numbers at the meeting but little hope that they would bring us answers.

Leadership is sometimes very tough and I suspect that if we get movement it will be because organisations like Smart and Aviva and Standard Life, who had senior workplace executives at the meeting just club together and announce they are doing something. There will be many who won’t. The two huge master trusts who the PPI told us had the vast majority of small pots were not at the meeting, until they and others who have been auto-enrolling low income, fast moving people from day one stand up, there will be no significant change.

If they do nothing, the best hope is that the dashboard will reunite people to their small pots and we may have some legislation before the 2030 Pension Bill deadline to make transferring small pots to big ones. The losers will be the providers first and last and they will only have themselves to blame.  The red button is still some way off being pressed though everyone agrees it should be.  Meanwhile it’s back to daytime work, ensuring people get a pension from their pots.