Category Archives: economics

Fund managers -Norma Cohen is still watching!

Posted on September 1, 2017 by

  The great British financial journalist Norma Cohen rarely publishes in the FT these days, when she does, it is to great effect. This week she published a quiet and thoughtful piece on the impact MIFID II is having on … Continue reading →

Posted in Blogging, David Pitt-Watson, economics, journalism, pensions | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

What can men do to reduce gender pay inequality?

Posted on July 24, 2017 by

For a start they can stop “welcoming this discussion” and blathering other related clichés! If men welcomed a serious discussion on gender pay equality, we’d have been having them regularly since equal pay for both gender (for the same job) became … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, leadership, pension playpen, pensions | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Lifetime pricing – a broken model?

Posted on May 30, 2017 by

    Of all the orthodoxies within pension insurance, the concept of “lifetime pricing” is the most sacred. What Lifetime pricing means for an insurance company is the promise of a stable stream of profit from an insurance policy over … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, pensions | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why pensions pinch your pay packet

Posted on December 11, 2016 by

We now know that we are unlikely to get a national pay rise for the rest of the decade. We are worse off in terms of wages than we were ten years ago. What we get paid matters and with … Continue reading →

Posted in accountants, actuaries, economics, pension playpen, pensions | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Opt in to certainty

Posted on June 8, 2013 by

My partner has come up with a very simple way to improve DC. Her suggestion is this. Large DC plans simply set a level of pension they can afford to pay from the funds within the plan and this is … Continue reading →

Posted in annuity, David Pitt-Watson, dc pensions, economics, pensions | 4 Comments

How the banks try to f*ck us – and how we deal with them

Posted on March 10, 2013 by

It’s Sunday morning and I am reading a poem written around 1936 by Ezra Pound. It is about Usury , in this context the bad practice of the Medici Bank which Pound claimed screwed up the great artistic achievements of medieval … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, ezra pound, Fiduciary Management, Financial Education, Fred Goodwin, governance, happiness, pensions, poetry, Popcorn Pensions | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The solid value of insurance

Posted on January 19, 2013 by

“The people I talk to full into one of two categories, either you’ve built up some money and want to hang onto it, or you are looking to .” That was our opening gambit when we met with prospects. I … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, Fiduciary Management, life insurance, pensions | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Whose risk is it anyway?

Posted on November 17, 2012 by

The Government wants us to think about pension risk sharing… To consider how much responsibility we can take for our own financial welfare when we’re really old. To consider what our employers can do to help And consider (which they talk of quietly)  … Continue reading →

Posted in actuaries, auto-enrolment, dc pensions, de-risking, defined aspiration, economics, pensions, Personal Accounts, Retirement | 5 Comments

End of an epoch?

Posted on July 25, 2012 by

This is an article by Con Keating, reproduced with his kind permission. It’s hard but it’s worth it- Con is the cleverest man in town. The demise of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s was epoch-defining; it constituted a massive shift of … Continue reading →

Posted in Bankers, Change, economics, EU Solvency II, Treasury | Leave a comment

Savvy punters will drive down pension charges.

Posted on July 21, 2012 by

Inefficient markets – don’t you just love ’em! We all love a bargain whether at the local boot or in the stock market. There was a time when I believed I could pick a stock or a horse and beat … Continue reading →

Posted in auto-enrolment, Bankers, dc pensions, defined aspiration, economics, Horse racing, leadership, Management, Martin Lewis, NEST, pensions, Retail Distribution Review | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments