I enjoyed Richard Smith’s post on L&G’s moan about not getting enough paid into workplace pensions

We know only too well that enough money is going into pension pots. Last Friday I listened to a friend telling the few delegates who stayed on to hear him, we need to make pensions a more attractive proposition to the folk who one day will get a pension from them.

I suspect that people who pay into a “pension” will expect a “pension”. Richard and Rory are as one in suggesting we could do better for the people we serve by making the prospect of a pension a little more attractive to the people we serve.

So this Government has decided to put bigger pensions before more contributions and if I was the FD of a major company paying contributions into a workplace pension, the news that the pension that I’d be giving could go up by up to 60% without me having to pay more contributions, I’d be more interested.

If I was younger , I would be looking for value for my money , before investing money into a pension plan the fruits of which would be decades away.

People will use pension boards and find the visit like a visit to the dentist. Richard takes us through that journey in another gem where he reminds us of the pain of the visit, discovering the prospects for the future , the satisfaction of at least engaging with the problem and the worry of the cost of putting things right (for teeth read retirement income).

Let’s finish where we started, with another Richard Smith gem. The bad news coming this time from Standard Life rather than L&G. I hope that both are considering how to improve the pensions from the pots they are helping us build up. It is the pension and not the pot that we’ll be confronted by when going to the dentist …sorry – pension dashboard.