It’s the last week in August, so time to drag up the longest running failure to deliver we’ve ever had.

Superfunds?

Small pot consolidation?

Pension Dashboards?

VFM assessments?

We are not getting good ideas into action. It has not been since the introduction of auto-enrolment 14 years ago that we had a pension idea that turned into action and it worked because it was introduced in stages.

One thing that the above four have in common is that all of them have been stuck with Government with the private sector unable to move things on as they did the introduction of workplace pensions for (almost) everyone.

I exclude CDC from this list because Royal Mail broke the pattern and introduced a new kind of pension out of commercial determination.Royal Mail’s plan is a step to what CDC is becoming but that is precisely the iterative process that allows good ideas to happen.

AE was iterative, the big employers started it and it took five years to get everyone in

I fear that VFM is not iterative, it is not the development of a good idea by the private sector . It is an initiative to employers or employees, only an opportunity for our regulators to feel important. By the time it has arrived, the problem that it addressed in 2017 will have blown over, consolidation is happening because of a commercial imperative and some decisive action from the DWP (scale).

VFM will be increasingly important when they see their pots on a pension dashboard and work out which ones to keep and which to consolidate or cash in. We need David Harris to remind us of what a mess VFM is.

I do not consider more public policy evaluation important as he does. Leave the regulators and legislators to go on arguing among themselves.

But David Harris is right to point out that the people who need to work out “value for money” from their retirement savings are the people who take the risk – the punters like you and me!

I had a bit of a hissy fit last night and pronounce VFM as being discussed by TPR and FCA as little  help to ordinary savers .

Time form assessments at horse race meetings give some guidance as to horse’s chances but no one supposes shelling out for their information will make us a winner.

What Australia had done for many years was to provide analysis of performance (form) of Super funds and the equivalent of horse-weights – the charges carried by the fund.

More sophisticated breakdowns of what Supers delivered has been available and increasingly information is free – as AI is used to gather it.

What Britain is doing , through CAPdata and other services such as AgeWage is to offer employers and end users analysis of the form of the pension provider they are using.

This will continue to provide the value that Time form does, to those who are prepared to pay for it.  It would be ludicrous in horse-racing for there to be a value for money service imposed by Government for investing on nags.

I see no relevance in TPR and FCA’s attempt to bring VFM into play for decisions on DC saving. Pot consolidation will be the only issue left by the time the VFM assessment service is up and running and that needs an equivalent to Time Form.