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Coffee Morning – IHT on Pensions…REALLY!!! CPD included
Type – Teams Online
When – Tuesday 17th March at 10:30am
You are cordially invited to attend our next Coffee Morning. At this event we are delighted that Mark Plewes from WBR Group will be presenting his thoughts on the change in IHT for the Pensions landscape.
He will give us his thinking of an overview of where things sit with the current IHT proposals on unused pensions passing through parliament and any lingering concerns that there might still be around implementation and issues. He will also want to touch on how the potential complexity of the plans might impact outcomes for beneficiaries and whether there is presently a risk of wider detriment and scam activity in terms of the confusion that such a change will cause.
Background:
In December 2025 the Government published the Finance Bill containing provisions to bring pension scheme death benefits within the scope of inheritance tax from 6 April 2027. We look at what has changed since the legislation was originally published in draft, and consider what action SIPP and SSAS providers need to be taking now.
Agenda
- What to do now?
- How will pension planning change?
- Occupational vs SIPP/SSAS?
- What are the alternatives?
- Will a new government U Turn this decision?
TO REGISTER
Please add to your calendar and click HERE on the day
Mark Plewes is Head of Technical at WBR Group and recently appeared by invitation at the House of Lords to inform the pensions finance bill debate.
Mark has been at WBR Group for over 3 years and prior to this role he was Senior Technical Specialist at Rowanmoor.
This should be a lively session with emotions running high!!.
We are encouraged to invest long term, in infrastructure and in the U.K.
There are plenty of examples where this brings improved returns.
However, liquidity is sacrificed, liquid assets must be used to provide pensions and the asset allocation is distorted with illiquidity increasing.
Drawdown can be amended but if IHT is to be accounted for and paid in the current time table of a few months after death we have the prospect of forced sales and haircuts taken on long term investment. Even paying the IHT over time can become difficult.
Should there be exemptions or relief for these mandated or encouraged investments?
Some private equity advocates claim “tokenisation” can/will convert ownership rights in private funds or companies into digital tokens on a blockchain, increasing liquidity, reducing transaction costs, and enabling fractional ownership for a broader investor base.
This process is said to streamline fundraising and offer faster settlement, transitioning private markets toward greater transparency and accessibility.
Personally, I don’t buy this, and find the use of the word “tokenisation”
frankly confusing when “Tokenisation” is also the foundational process within AI models of breaking down text, images, or audio into smaller units called tokens, which are then converted into numerical vectors for analysis and generation.
This AI process converts language into manageable chunks, with 1 token roughly equal to 4 characters or 0.75 words.
It is said to be crucial for training efficiency, cost calculation, and handling complex or unknown words in Large Language Models (LLMs).
I still find the numerical abilities of the free AI apps very much wanting.
They fail with calculating money-weighted rates of return, for example, particularly if there periods of both negative and positive returns, or even solving simple algebraic puzzles.
At least that’s been my experience.