This blog includes this response from Richard Smith, a way to see the  video of the Pensions UKAC26 speech and the slides that the Pensions Minister used. But I kick off by the reaction of my friend Richard Smith which rounds up a series of posts he’s made to those going to the Conference, leaving the Conference or just interested in the state of the pensions industry.

You can’t watch Torsten Bell talking to the Pensions UK Annual Conference 2026

unless you email me at henry@agewage.com.

or you are a member of the viewing group established by Pensions UK ,if you are – click here

That’s the video but it you want to go through the slides with my thought on what Torsten Bell said, read on.

The slides tell the story of the first thirty minutes of a forty five minute session.

It was witty and scathing, it made me and my partner laugh a lot and it had an authority about it that you don’t often get from pensions ministers (well ever in my memory).

Wearing a tory blue tie and looking up for a fight, Torsten Bell was sorry when he heard he wasn’t getting live questions. Infact he got tame questions which he answered with very little trouble.

There were two pieces of news, the first confirming what he dole Calum Kapoor of the FT yesterday. The Pensions Commission will report in February and the Government is not going to sit on the report but do something pretty quickly afterwards.

The second bit of news is that he now expects to announce detail about Guided Retirement alongside the regulations for Retirement CDC. I am not sure how I’d feel about setting up a Retirement CDC if it was to be just another choice of defaults. I’m not sure how committed to defaults the majority of trustees and their providers are.

Bell made the cute point that if you aren’t behind your default it can’t be very good and I suspect that we are at the same stage with regards retirement defaults as we were about savings defaults before AE came in and defaults took over.

We now believe in lovers of personal choice that there should be as many defaults as there are savers (or so it seems to me). Clearly Torsten Bell is up for a fight and he looked a little disappointed that he didn’t get one.

Answer, people have lost trust in pensions and the people who provide them (presumably including polticians and civil servants.

No group shows confidence and that includes people 55-64 years old (who seem to expect the state pension before they are). My partner says that women are more confident than men because they are more sensible, I have to agree.

The state pension is eating up tax and will eat a higher amount the longer we go on living longer and not breeding fast enough

Private pensions are currently at a height as boomers claim their private DB pensions, there won’t be many of them claiming in 2041 and while we will see a wider spread of savers have a higher wage in retirement from savings, it won’t be increase fast from its nadir in 2043.

The bulk of the speech was well delivered but really not that helpful. If people in the hall had much interest in state pensions they would have got all this from my blog already

The smart point that Torsten Bell made, was that it isn’t the poor who have most to lose from the loss of the triple lock. Pensioner poverty fell with the arrival of pension credit and has not improved much since the introduction of the triple lock.

Pensioner poverty will continue to fall, something that I don’t think many in the hall or out understand.

This slide shows just how the new state pension in 2016 congregated people to £200 per week back in 2016. The winners and the losers are now fewer, most of us get the same.

This is a hat-tip to Steve Webb who introduced it . Frankly it is the least applauded of the important  successes of the liberal/conservative alliance’s work and pension policy.

A politician cannot guarantee adequate private pensions by diverting money into pension services but a politician can make sure the private pension system works. My take on this is that Torsten Bell will focus on the efficiency of the system not the amount going into it.

Hurrah

Boo! This doesn’t suggest that private savings has worked quite as Turner’s commission wanted to it. We aren’t really in love with retirement savings!

And only 4% of self-employed people ( a very high proportion of the population relative to our European neighbours), are using pension savings plans. We really don’t love private pensions when we don’t get employer contributions!

It is not just money put aside but what happens to that money that makes for adequacy. It’s what the investment does.

This slide did not properly get talked to but it’s the crucial reform that’s coming in with CDC and to a lesser extent Guided Retirement.

People now have AI to help them make complaints.

This matter and is a third new reform announced. The review will help terminally ill people get at their pension pot more easily and with less proof needed of impending death.

People who earn little can often live with people who earn a lot.

But the way universal credit works it makes sense to save with tax relief (or rebates if compensated if in a net pay scheme). 

I suspect that there was too much in the speech and not enough time to get through it but nevertheless it was rather more entertaining and informative than many I have heard. There was not interaction with the audience apart from laughter and that’s a shame.

In the questions we had discussion of VFM but that was about it. Nothing about pension dashboards, small pots and very little about collective pensions (DB and CDC). There was some talk of surpluses (including LGPS) and a conclusion that the pensions minister would leave trustees to work it out for themselves with due regard to the covenant that they were getting.

The final question from Zoe Alexander was what the pensions industry should be doing between now and the next Annual Conference. The rather uncontentious reply was that the pensions sector should do its best to restore confidence in it.

If you want to read the explanation of the State Pension Slides from Torsten’s words you can follow this thread

Sun-drenched start to the day in Liverpool for the Pensions UK annual conference. Lovely to see lots of friendly faces and to discuss what is a pivotal moment for pensions – the next year will lay the ground work for the pensions system that will take us into the middle of this century

— Torsten Bell (@torstenbell.bsky.social) October 15, 2026 at 2:46 PM