You’re either one of the 49 people who run our pension savings or close to them to get a seat at the Pension Commission’s launch yesterday!

The Commission’s launch coincided with Professional Pension’s annual discussion of the nuts and boults of running pension schemes – DB, DC and CDC.

The day was bookended by two keynotes, the first on the state of the global economy from Jennifer McKeown

the finale from Sir Richard Shirreff about the safety of the same globe!  I sat for the latter talk next to my Ukrainian friend Natalia,we both had tears in our eyes though both Jennifer and Richard gave talks of some resilience, we will win through.

A very brave move on Jon Stapleton’s part was to load the morning with sessions on ESG and the speakers spoke with a prominence they acknowledged isn’t normally given to pensions as a responsible force for good in the Environment , in Society and in Governance.

There followed a discussion of how DB schemes could invest and measure investment and liabilities as insurers do. This from Schroders got approval from my friends who are DB Trustees. Peter Cameron-Brown explained to me he’d been using dynamic discounting for many years. You learn something new at these events.

Sadly I was called out to have a discussion on CDC with friends at our regulator and missed a talk of Barnett Waddingham’s Mark Futcher on how DC hopes to get its act together to pay pensions!

I also missed the first half of BlackRock’s duo of talkers on CDC. I got back in time for the questions and was blown away! Not only were they talking good sense but they were doing so with a vigour that had been in short supply before! I gave them two 10s on the feedback chart and I’m glad I remembered to hand it in at the end of the day.

I had heard that BlackRock were interested in providing investment services to CDC schemes offering workplace pensions and I was delighted that here were people who were talking about getting started in 2027.

Anthony Ellis of Hymans Robertson finished the morning with an amazing talk on how we can get diversity into DC (and CDC) pensions.  I am minded to talk with investment pools at LGPS and get them involved as Anthony suggested that we move towards a more collaborative approach between DB, DC and CDC.

I’ll give this plug for the Convene venues, here and at 22 Bishopsgate, they are not extravagant with food but offer fodder which is wholesome and typically delicious. Lunch was an opportunity to meet with old friends and meet some new ones.

The afternoon allowed me to listen to those I respect but I was too badly organised to manage movement between the various streams and was gutted not to make it to hear Paul Waters (an old Gissings friend). He was part of “key themes”, a stream of speakers I could have enjoyed if I knew where they were speaking! I also missed Oliver Morley on dashboards though I caught him as he was leaving to give him my thoughts on presenting income for DC and CDC (but more of that later!).

I did listen in to talks about communications with members from administrator and wondered whether social media could play a part in this. Many of us have questions we could find much easier answering those who pay claims on pensions using WhatsApp of even Facebook, why are we restricted to email so far? I will be talking with Aptia over the summer and would have asked them in their session had there been time for questions!

This may sound a little random a day but it wasn’t. I was there to speak for and hear about CDC which is my passion. I sneaked in a question to the final pensions session before the military finale. The question to Sophia Singleton, Dominic Harris and Harus Rai was simple

Does the panel believe that CDC can provide better pensions?

I left the question on Slido anonymous so I could get it liked and liked it was as were the answers of the panel which were diverse, I will forever love Dominic for his response as the Ombudsman, CDC should have friends in every corner of the pensions world and you are now a friend of CDC to me- Dominic.

Thanks

Thanks to Professional Pensions for this enervating day. If I’d thought it was rot I would have said so; it wasn’t – it was very good. I only wish you had the video of the first half of the BlackRock talk! But I am determined to hear it from the horse’s mouth”