We shouldn’t under-estimate the challenge facing UK Pensions and Pensions UK.
- The DC pension boom of the past fifteen years has now to turn pots into pensions
- A challenge to these “pensions” from CDC cannot be kicked down the alley again
- Defined benefit schemes no longer look a basket case
- Pensions UK will need to reposition itself to represent a new normal
I’ve know Jamie since the early days of People’s Pension where he guided the mutual from success as a stakeholder pension provider to a thriving workplace pension without help from Government or shareholders. The business he helped set up caught the eye of Andrew Evans at Smart and for the last eight years he’s built that business till it’s reached the first challenge the Government has set DC master trusts in terms of scale.
Importantly, Jamie works outside the insurance world and is not conflicted as his predecessor was. Smart is an occupational scheme and has no baggage from the past . I hope he will be able to embrace innovation as he did in his two major roles (outlined above).
I hope too that he will reposition Pensions UK to embrace the challenges of the Pension Schemes Act. It is not just at home (DC) that Jamie will find change. DB will have to deal not just with deficits but surpluses. The end-game now includes pension superfunds and variants such as CBJPs.
CDC is here and the first handful of pretenders to be multi-employer workplace plans will set out to be authorised by August. DC master trusts will be able to convert to CDC either in whole or (more likely) when the retirement CDC legislation is laid.
Jamie Fiveash has a lot to deal with and his term will coincide not just with the implementation of the second legislation that the DWP will write but the regulation that goes with it.
This will happen under a Government that has had success in its Pension Schemes Act and with a Pension Minister who has firm views which he articulates willingly.
I have liked Jamie since I met him nearly 15 years ago. If I had had a vote for the next Chair of Pensions UK , he would have been on my shortest of short lists.
I hope that he will listen to voices outside the tent and not be bought by those with well lined wallets. Now is the time to turn pots to pensions and to keep those pensions that we built last century in place.
From a political and economic perspective, the money in out pension system has the capacity to drive Britain forward but we need vision from the private sector or we will give our long-term money away to American finance houses.
It’s an illustrious list of Chairs that Jamie joins. Well done Emma Douglas, you have left gracefully to chair the Pensions Regulator. Pensions UK is more than the conferences, it is the regional meetings, its research unit and its political lobbying.
It is the better for having Jamie Fiveash in the Chair. You can read the Press release here.
