I found myself in that grim building in London’s Queen Street – the Connaught rooms. Fortunately the company made up for the surroundings (has no one thought of having locatable toilets in the place?).

The occasion, an SG Conference on paying income from pots or by-passing pots with CDC.

I went to support my friend Terry Pullinger who is the well built man in the middle of the panellists. His session was the better for him as he had no time to beat around the bush. In a few minutes he put the thoughts of ordinary people to a panel and audience of not so ordinary pension experts.

There were others in the afternoon (when I could get there) whose views I like . Massi of BlackRock and David Hutchins of Alliance Bernstein are people who understand how members can get pensions out of workplace pensions and though Massi talks of CDC and David of target funds, they both have members to the fore in their work.

It was good to finish the event with Angela Staral of People’s Partnership/Pension

David Porter’s now a colleague of hers and made a good chair.

But what I noticed from the talks and questions was how far we’ve drifted from the ideas of pensions that I started with over 40 years ago. Apart from Terry Pullinger, I don’t think anyone in the room had much to say about what people want and need. Instead we all seemed to be obsessed by solutions and products and how they could be sold to those who pick up the bills (the members/savers/employees) of workplace pensions.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to an SG event and it’s great to see they have progressed so far since I helped Stephen Glover out. I think there is a good balance here between sponsors and the needs of the audience and the audience are clever and influential people. This is a winning way of getting people to find out what’s going on without a trip to Liverpool and a significant bill for attending.

Thanks to SG for choosing such a topical subject to discuss and getting the right people in the room. Finally, a thank you to Elena Zhmurova of the Pensions Regulator who was decent enough to stay behind afterwards so we could talk about ways forward. People attending makes memories and I’ll remember yesterday for good people trying hard to get to a good way to turn pots to pensions. They should listen to Terry for a simple answer – we don’t really need pots at all.