I came away from the Waldorf in the Aldwych and walked over the Thames to Waterloo, my head full of what I’d heard and engaged with at the PensionsAge Autumn Conference.

Session after session featured a discussion of CDC. This could not have been thought possible a year ago. I remember sitting in this room 10 years ago listening to David Pitt-Watson saying what has been now enacted and has and is being built. More important to its success in 2027, is that it is what yesterday’s audience were asking about.

Let’s start with Helen Bell, who talked of Master Trusts becoming CDC schemes or adding R-CDC as their decumulation option.

Let’s move to the Danish Christian Hyldahl and Sophie Dapin, talking to us about European CDC and discussing , from BlackRock’s viewpoint, how CDC would develop in the UK. Let’s end the morning with the charming Monty Hadadi telling us about how he turned from internal auditor to Head of Pensions at one of the largest employers we have (First Bus). He thought he’d got away from CDC until a member of the audience asked him what he thought of it. He couldn’t hold back, he launched a torrent of praise for it and the opportunities it gave to schemes like his.

Lunchtime was spent talking with delegates – trustees , employers and providers about collective pensions and the demand for them. It was like another country to the one I attended the last PensionsAge conference in the same hall a year ago.

Move into the afternoon and I asked the British Business Bank whether they’d consider making it a condition of lending to or investing in companies on condition they upgraded their pensions. I may have caught Ian Connatty a little off his guard but I hope that we can follow up! Steve Charlton spoke for the smaller master trust struggling for scale but dominating the master trusts in terms of returns to members.

SEI’s the small ball at the top ,the larger balls stuck below the line!

The lady sat beside me , asked me whether CDC schemes suffer with a requirement to scale up by 2030. I replied they didn’t. She asked why SEI Master Trust did not convert to CDC.

CDC is not going to take pensions over, at least not yet. Helen Ball had kicked off the Conference by saying that 2027 would be a big year for pensions and she is right, it is the time when Church of England launches its CDC scheme and when the challenger schemes, Arboreum, Pensions Mutual and TPT start taking business. I wouldn’t have believed that CDC would have taken such a hold.

Thanks to PensionsAge for a great day. People stayed to the very end to hear each speaker and it wasn’t just for the M&S card that we did.