What in heaven’s name does the headline mean?
I’m 65 and I’m at the end of the road. What’s the map telling me I’m getting as a pension from Nest and L&G?
Katherine Photiou assures me that she’s on the road to getting my trust
I like Katherine Photiou and I like Gavin Perera -Betts but if we are to get back trust in private pensions we are going to need to go a little faster than this.
Photiou added members’ trust in the system will be “undermined” when the system “doesn’t join up” and when the government, industry and regulators “confuse everyone”, as that will “erode trust”.
“You can erode trust with a slow transfer or a confusing statement.“
She concluded that it is “incumbent” on the industry to ensure the reforms laid out in the roadmap are deliverable and Perera-Betts added it is “non-negotiable” for the industry to deliver them. (from Professional Pensions)
I’m sorry but it’s not connecting systems that will make me trust my DC providers. It’s the whole private pension system that’s letting me down.
When this Government talks about getting back trust it is not incompetence in administrating pensions or giving us duff information that’s on their minds. I am frustrated by Nest’s hopeless information delivered to my pension dashboard while I find Legal & General really rather good. But so what? That’s only about my car sitting in the garage! I want to go for a very long drive and I haven’t got a key let alone a roadmap!
It is receiving my wage in retirement that will get back my trust. It is not providers connecting their systems!
What I want from my two DC pots with Nest and L&G is a pension that allows me to plan my retirement and right now, when I go on my Nest and L&G websites there is nothing that tells me what I’m going to get as a pension.
It is not the adequacy, it’s the fact that there’s no way that I can tell how much pension I’m going to get (I’m 65 in 24 days- I would like to know!).
Whether to pull my two pots into one is a “nice to”, what I want is a statement that tells me how I get a pension like the state pension – one that goes up with the cost of living and one that I can take at 65 or leave to 67 (and get a bit more for waiting). I want to know that my common law wife can get a pension if I die (I nearly did) and I want to know whether I can swap some pension for tax free cash and the impact of doing so on my income.
None of these very simple questions is answered on my Nest or L&G page of their website.
My experience isn’t unique. The vast majority of people who have put away a proportion of their salary and bonus for retirement, have done so to get a regular income that protects them from a rise in the cost of living. When I get paper statements from L&G and Nest they do offer me a Statutory Money Purchase Illustration but you have to be on the inside to know that there’s no cost of living protection nor a pension quoted for the wife. It’s the amount of income I can get from an annuity (sort of) but it’s a level annuity.
So here’s my message to Gavin and Katherine. What I want is the stuff on the right hand side of this slide not the left hand side.
This is not about me finding I haven’t paid enough into the pot, I want to trust a system that now I’m 65 makes sense. I can’t and that pi*@es me off.
