The St Andrews Football team who last night won the Fife Cup for Derek Scott and others!

I enjoy the passion of those who comment on my blog. I am amazed by the quantity, quality and diversity of comment that I get over social media. Mostly through anonymous comment on my blog and occasionally from the irrepressible Derek Scott on just about everything!

I bring you three variations on a theme

First the dark voice of Jnamdoc

We haven’t heard much from “him or her” in a while but the message is clear.

Sounds as if Jnamdoc was at Pensions UK’s investment conference in March

I’m really not sure at all what is the purpose of Pension UK?

I’ve given up being disappointed by its group think and absence of system wide thinking. The recent conference ignored CDC and DB run on.

Seems their role is to support or to try to interpret what the Insurers or Govt are peddling

A Chair from Insurer background was like asking the fox to guard the chickens. Not that the fox is intrinsically ‘bad’ – it’s just being a fox.

Things that genuinely would benefit workers and members (eg CDC or DB run with member upside) seem to get short changed as they do not suit the commercial interest of Insurers. And they’ve swallowed the IA mantra of only solving ‘adequacy’ through higher contributions and higher fees. The only certain winners from that are asset gatherers.

I guess part of the problem with Pensions UK is an absence of genuine member representation (and let’s accept that does not include ‘professional’ trustees!). Perhaps half of its board and committees should be filled with union reps, and that should look to others apart from the ABI/IA for CPD?

Let’s be honest, UK pension provision, once an envy, is a mess after 20 odd years of NAPF/PLSA group think.

We can do better.

Next is Pensions Oldie, less angry but equally passionate!

And Pensions Oldie’s on my blog pointing tot the same important themes but with a different verbal paint brush.

In pension terms it assumes we will continue to live in a DC world.

It looks increasingly likely that the balance will swing back to a collective world with pensions pooled and the individual’s decisions minimised.

For most of the population, the key pension decisions are made by employers.

Which employer is going to continue to contribute to traditional DC (whether GPP or through a mastertrust), when they realise that those same contributions could provide a pension 60% larger if paid into a CDC scheme.

Employee or union pressures are very quickly going to call out those employers remaining with DC arrangements.

IHT and restrictions on salary sacrifice arrangements are already causing employers to reassess the benefits of their pension contributions accelerating the redirection from a savings vehicle towards retirement income.

While still restricted to a small base, companies with existing DB pension scheme are realising that their asset pool would be more efficiently used running on their pension scheme than paying the profit margin premium to buy out the pension liabilities with an insurance company.

Already they are realising that released surpluses are most efficiently used to fund future pension contributions.  It is but a small further step to realise that those contributions could be even more efficiently retained in the existing pool to fund DB benefits for its current and future workforce.

At present that will leave the self-employed and non employed using DC saving plans making decisions as how to turn them into pensions.  There may well be heterogeneity in risk preferences within this group.

Finally the irrepressible Derek Scott – with the full roar of Scottish passion about him!

and here is correspondence from Derek Scott about Scottish football affairs that touch on Scottish pensions discussions, St Johnstone is Perth (and Stagecoach’s) home football team and St Andrews is just down the road in Fife!

Followed by St Johnstone’s biggest night as they return to the Scottish Premier

and here’s the commentary from Derek Scott!

Not a hope we all thought, St Andrews against Dunfermline, and teenagers in either goal

and then the miracle and Dunfermline are victims once again!

I hope that made your weekday morning –  all this social media fires me up! Thanks – whoever you contributors are