OK, I’m not expecting anyone but the most bored lawyer to open this and read it end to end but here it is. This blog is a celebration not of the “first day of applications of authorisation for Trustees of UMES schemes” but of  the first day we can go to work knowing that a wage in retirement is within our grasp.

I am taking out Guy Opperman for lunch, acknowledging that CDC kicked off under his watch and with his help demanding that we have a pension that targeted CPI in payment.

The best part of a decade has passed since it was first discussed at a time of pension crisis at Royal Mail. Jon Millidge, along with Terry Pullinger of CWU , Hilary Salt and Derek Benstead of First Actuarial and Simon Eagle of WTW got the bare bones agreement in place that allowed Royal Mail to continue working.

Philip Bennett of Slaughter of May (now a professor at Durham University) , helped write most of the legislation that went into the Pension Schemes Act in 2021 to allow CDC to work for Royal Mail.

Since then there has been four years of work within the DWP to move the original legislation to what we have today, delivered to us on October 23rd of last year.

The first working day of CDC work pensions

Recently , BlackRock’s Massimiliano Delle Donne called the CDC that people will be getting instead of their current workplace pension as right in everything but name.

I agree; CDC is used in the USA to cover healthcare and it means nothing to the people it is designed for – people who simply want a pension when they retire. I have broached with those I work with that we could call a CDC scheme “Retirement Wage”, as that is what it sets out to provide. It will offer a comparable tax-free sum to what’s available under DC saving schemes and it should offer the CPI intended by Guy Opperman, it should provide spouse’s with pensions if marital partners die first. It will offer walk away terms before the pension starts being paid – but that is it.

Most importantly, this CDC pension is a workplace pension that operates in the same way as the pension people they were enrolled into. We can leave it to the lawyers to call it “unconnected multiple employer scheme”, it will be commonly known as a type of mastertrust that pays a pension not a pot. It is a work pension for multiple employers , doing what DB and DC pensions cannot do and that’s to take decisions away from ordinary people and replace them with a retirement wage (a pension).

A decade in the making CDC workplace pensions are here. They should provide a retirement wage for millions

We have finally moved on and can say Government “has extended” collective pension schemes.

It is good to read this article who we hope to see reporting soon again! It was posted in October 2024! The wheels of pension grind slowly (unless the Treasury is oiling them).