It’s not often that we get the opinion of my friend Jon Stapleton. He is a chair, a host and he edits other people’s views but rarely do we see him speaking for himself. When he does, I always sit up and take what he’s saying in. There was one such moment yesterday.

The reality for most people is that they have no idea what “good” is. We don’t yet have a Value for Money initiative to compare one pension saving plan with another (as Australia has for several years).

In the absence of any good way to compare one plan with another, we will go with the easiest option and that means choice comes down to service. Those who have made a success of pot consolidation have won our hearts with their service. I suspect that AJ Bell , Hargreaves Lansdown, Interactive Investor and such investor friendly services win the hearts of the committed experts who can make use of their choice and charts.

But when I think of “popular”, I think now of Pensions Bee who have made pensions a bit of a laugh – as well as being very good at what they do. No other consolidator has found a football club to sponsor as Pension Bee sponsor Brentford.

But I suspect Pension Bee get on Jonathan’s nerves because they down value pensions. There is a side of me that gets annoyed that Pension Bee do pots rather than pensions but I suspect that they will move with their clients who are mostly young and find ways to pay them back a regular income as demand increases. I would differ from Jon in what I think of switching “for the wrong reasons”.

If the only thing we measure value on is the charges paid, then we have missed the bigger point. The bigger point is that most people have their money in lots of different pots and have no encouragement to bring them together. Infact most people are discouraged from bringing their pots into one manageable place.

I would take two case studies and see how they work out. Pension Bee are hugely popular by those who use them but expensive. Nest are generally loathed by those who use them but have a cheaper  product.  If I was Jon, I’d go for Nest, if I was Pension Plowman I’d go for Pension Bee. I know damn well that good service costs money. The real problem for me is that I want something which neither Nest or Pension Bee can give me which is a pension that lasts as long as I do. Nest palm me off on Rothesay who will pay me an annuity if I live past 85, Romi and Pension Bee have worked that their customers want freedom.

Bottom line, we are still to find a way to explain pension plan choice to people without falling into some hole dug 40 years ago by a predecessor of the FCA who barred advice on pension products being delivered by anyone but a regulated adviser. That I am afraid has stopped the kind of comparison service that Jon and I would like, from getting friction enough to stick with the public.