PP Live 2026 – for those who weren’t at the Pension Commission launch yesterday!

Posted on May 20, 2026 by henry tapper

 

You’re either one of the 49 people who run our pension savings or close to them to get a seat at the Pension Commission’s launch yesterday!

The Commission’s launch coincided with Professional Pension’s annual discussion of the nuts and boults of running pension schemes – DB, DC and CDC.

The day was bookended by two keynotes, the first on the state of the global economy from Jennifer McKeown

the finale from Sir Richard Shirreff about the safety of the same globe!  I sat for the latter talk next to my Ukrainian friend Natalia,we both had tears in our eyes though both Jennifer and Richard gave talks of some resilience, we will win through.

A very brave move on Jon Stapleton’s part was to load the morning with sessions on ESG and the speakers spoke with a prominence they acknowledged isn’t normally given to pensions as a responsible force for good in the Environment , in Society and in Governance.

There followed a discussion of how DB schemes could invest and measure investment and liabilities as insurers do. This from Schroders got approval from my friends who are DB Trustees. Peter Cameron-Brown explained to me he’d been using dynamic discounting for many years. You learn something new at these events.

Sadly I was called out to have a discussion on CDC with friends at our regulator and missed a talk of Barnett Waddingham’s Mark Futcher on how DC hopes to get its act together to pay pensions!

I also missed the first half of BlackRock’s duo of talkers on CDC. I got back in time for the questions and was blown away! Not only were they talking good sense but they were doing so with a vigour that had been in short supply before! I gave them two 10s on the feedback chart and I’m glad I remembered to hand it in at the end of the day.

I had heard that BlackRock were interested in providing investment services to CDC schemes offering workplace pensions and I was delighted that here were people who were talking about getting started in 2027.

Anthony Ellis of Hymans Robertson finished the morning with an amazing talk on how we can get diversity into DC (and CDC) pensions.  I am minded to talk with investment pools at LGPS and get them involved as Anthony suggested that we move towards a more collaborative approach between DB, DC and CDC.

I’ll give this plug for the Convene venues, here and at 22 Bishopsgate, they are not extravagant with food but offer fodder which is wholesome and typically delicious. Lunch was an opportunity to meet with old friends and meet some new ones.

The afternoon allowed me to listen to those I respect but I was too badly organised to manage movement between the various streams and was gutted not to make it to hear Paul Waters (an old Gissings friend). He was part of “key themes”, a stream of speakers I could have enjoyed if I knew where they were speaking! I also missed Oliver Morley on dashboards though I caught him as he was leaving to give him my thoughts on presenting income for DC and CDC (but more of that later!).

I did listen in to talks about communications with members from administrator and wondered whether social media could play a part in this. Many of us have questions we could find much easier answering those who pay claims on pensions using WhatsApp of even Facebook, why are we restricted to email so far? I will be talking with Aptia over the summer and would have asked them in their session had there been time for questions!

This may sound a little random a day but it wasn’t. I was there to speak for and hear about CDC which is my passion. I sneaked in a question to the final pensions session before the military finale. The question to Sophia Singleton, Dominic Harris and Harus Rai was simple

Does the panel believe that CDC can provide better pensions?

I left the question on Slido anonymous so I could get it liked and liked it was as were the answers of the panel which were diverse, I will forever love Dominic for his response as the Ombudsman, CDC should have friends in every corner of the pensions world and you are now a friend of CDC to me- Dominic.

Thanks

Thanks to Professional Pensions for this enervating day. If I’d thought it was rot I would have said so; it wasn’t – it was very good. I only wish you had the video of the first half of the BlackRock talk! But I am determined to hear it from the horse’s mouth”

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Savers need to know how their savings did – say these heroes of VFM!

Posted on May 20, 2026 by henry tapper

Jo is right, how we have done with our savings should be important to us in the UK as it is in her native Australia

But it goes further than the analysis from Corporate Adviser (good as that is)

Olly and Dean are right, the best way to judge the master trusts is by what they have done for their savers.

This cannot be done by maths and actuarial assumptions, performance needs to be measured using the data from member’s savings. That tells you the value of their money saved .

It is best done with individual’s data because DC is not collective but individual, we all get our own results and though these can be aggregated, the risk stays with the saver.

My firm, AgeWage, has a system to measure how the savers of a DC workplace pension have done and the system can establish whether there has been advantage gained by those who have chose their own funds against those who’ve allowed their payments to be invested in the default.

Using individual’s data picks up on what Olly Payne , the reward director and international pensions director of Ford.

To make a fairer comparison for consideration of workplace pension providers, I’d be interested to see how the results changed if it was based on monthly contributions for 10 years?

This is the crux of the problem for the value for money project set in train by the DWP and now being developed by TPR.  We cannot tell people the value for money that they got by using comparisons based on actuarial brilliance, we need to measure how people have actually done and that means using their data to measure their experience.

Dean, who like Olly is an actuary, is prepared to use the short-cut that Jo has publicised and  for a banner, I think he and Jo are  quite right. Jo is right to conclude that over time equities will outperform funds that balance growth with defensive strategies (the problem for those she quotes as underperforming). Those who support CDC know that in the long term you get better pensions from investing for growth all the time!

And of course you don’t have to be big to invest purely in growth, the likes of Lewis Investment master trust has proved that.

But this is too abstract for ordinary folk. If we are to move to a culture where people are interested in value for money from their pension saving , we need to give them that is more personal to them.

We should try looking  at the savings we make and the pot we get back! It’s the only way to give those who take all the risk , a valid measurement of performance that they can understand their defined contribution VFM.

Here are the heroes of this blog!

Olly Payne
Jo Cumbo
John Greenwood
Dean Wetton

 

 

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“Being Brave” on a “Commission Impossible”? How does the pension industry react to the Commission?

Posted on May 20, 2026 by henry tapper

Jeannie Drake

This article first appeared in IPE, written by Pamela Kokoska.

It’s title is “UK pensions industry urges Commission to “be brave” on adequacy. There is some irony in the inverted commas. I prefer the comedy of the  Pension Extra title “Commission impossible”.

The UK pensions industry has urged the Pensions Commission to be “brave” in its final recommendations to address pensions adequacy, warning that “too much time” has already been spent diagnosing the same problems.

The Pensions Commission today published its interim report on the state of retirement saving in the UK, highlighting that many people are not saving enough for retirement, particularly low and middle earners, the self-employed and women.

It warned that, without action, the number of people undersaving for retirement could rise from 15 million to 19 million, leaving large groups across the UK facing a “severe cliff-edge when they retire”.

In the meantime, the commission said public policy has an important role to play in shaping the future of pensions while maintaining the broad political consensus that has existed since the Turner commission in the 2000s. It added that any reforms should be implemented gradually.

The government has already ruled out changes to automatic enrolment contribution rates during the current Parliament.

Jeannie Drake, pensions commissioner, said current challenges require a renewed national settlement on pensions.

She said achieving this would require clarity of purpose, while also providing an

“opportunity to renew a social contract that commands confidence across the country”.

She added:

“The recommendations we present in our final report will address the need to secure adequate income in later life and a pension system that is fit for decades to come.”

Setting a clear path

Iain McLellan, director at Isio, said the findings would not surprise those working in the pensions industry.

Iain McLellan at Isio

Iain McLellan at Isio

He said:

“The next phase of the Commission’s work will be the hardest – what is clear is the need for greater levels of saving, but the key question is who pays for this – individuals, employers, or the state? In assessing the options, we hope the Commission supports Collective [Defined Contribution] DC arrangements which have the power to substantially improve outcomes and can potentially do a lot of the heavy lifting in addressing the adequacy challenge.”

Andy Briggs, CEO of Standard Life, has said that auto-enrolment contributions set at 8% are not enough to address the pensions adequacy crisis. And while change cannot happen overnight, the government should be

“setting a clear path towards increasing contribution rates to 12% gradually over time”.

Helen Forrest Hall, chief strategy officer at the Pensions Management Institute, said incremental change would not be enough and, while the Pension Schemes Act is a strong start, she argued the industry needs “bold and innovative solutions” comparable in scale to auto-enrolment.

She said:

“We call on the Pensions Commission to be brave in its recommendations and build cross-party consensus for an enduring reform roadmap.”

David Brooks at Broadstone

David Brooks at Broadstone

David Brooks, head of policy at Broadstone, said increasing minimum auto-enrolment contribution rates would “inevitably form part of the debate”, but warned it was “unlikely to be a panacea” given financial pressures facing households.

“Encouragingly, there is already a broad package of reforms that have just been passed into Law which aim to deliver better value for money for pension savers as well as improving awareness, engagement and outcomes,” he noted.

Adequacy challenge

Jamie Fiveash, CEO of Smart Pension, said improving long-term investment performance could also help address the adequacy challenge.

He said:

“Even a 1% difference in investment performance over a working lifetime can add six figures to a pension pot at retirement. In an environment where contribution levels are difficult to increase, improving outcomes through better long-term performance becomes even more important.”

Jamie Fiveash at Smart Pension

Jamie Fiveash at Smart Pension

Fiveash said closer scrutiny of pension fund net returns by advisers and employers could help savers optimise retirement outcomes, adding that the Pension Schemes Act Value for Money (VfM) framework was designed to provide clearer comparisons across pension funds for savers, employers, advisers and trustees.

He stated:

“Given today’s report, we have an opportunity to adopt its focus and purpose as early as possible. We would like to see a net returns measure applied across the entire defined contribution market, including the retail sector, by 2028, to create a true level playing field and allow all savers to make meaningful like-for-like comparisons based on value, not just cost.”

Standard Life’s Briggs also highlighted the fragmentation of the UK defined contribution market as a further issue requiring attention.

Andy Briggs at Standard Life

Andy Briggs at Standard Life

He said:

“Consolidation improves member outcomes, and is not just a focus for system efficiency. It is about unlocking capability, and larger schemes can invest to support infrastructure projects across the UK, and provide capital to growing companies while still meeting the primary duty to customers. Smaller schemes cannot do this consistently.”

Mark Futcher, head of DC at Barnett Waddingham, said “too much time” had already been spent diagnosing the same issues, although he acknowledged the scale of the challenge facing policymakers.

He, nevertheless, urged the Pensions Commission not to “pull any punches” in its final recommendations.

“We can’t keep staring at the same problems year after year – it’s time for decisions that genuinely move the dial on retirement outcomes,”

he said.

 

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The self-employed will be singled out for help by the Pension Commission today.

Posted on May 19, 2026 by henry tapper

While the Guardian has reported on the Pension Commission’s initial report as focussing on Gender Inequality, the Financial Times picks up on another theme reported to be in this report

Report highlights the ‘stark’ issue of self-employed workers struggling to fund savings for later life
Millions of Britons are not saving enough for retirement, warns Pension Commission
Alan Livesy Reporting this morning 19/05/26

Its  Report highlights the ‘stark’ issue of self-employed workers struggling to fund savings for later life.  The report says that just 4% of Britons who earn only from self-employment have a pension

Millions of Britons are not saving enough under the current pension system, a government-backed commission will announce in an interim report published today.

Baroness Jeannie Drake, head of the Pensions Commission, set up to assess the adequacy, fairness and sustainability of the UK system, warned that many self-employed workers will struggle to fund their retirements.

Low- and middle-earners are most at risk of inadequate pensions, the findings show, but there are increased concerns for those who are self-employed.

“The problem is bigger, I think, than people had anticipated,” said Drake in an interview with the FT. “The case for trying to find a [solution] is quite compelling.”

Although the commissioners viewed the self-employed as an important factor in their forthcoming final report on pensions adequacy, they now believe the problem is worse than expected.

Data in the report, seen by the FT, reveals that only 17 per cent of the self-employed have any pension, falling to just 4 per cent for those who earn only from self-employment.

“The degree of the issue on self-employed is much starker than [we] would have thought,”

said Sir Ian Cheshire, one of three pension commissioners along with Drake and Professor Nick Pearce of Bath University. The number of full-time self-employed workers is nearly 3mn, according to a labour market study by the House of Commons Library published in February.

This accounts for about one in eight of full-time employees. The commission, set up in 2025, intends to build on the work of a previous iteration led by Lord Adair Turner, which last reported in 2005.

Pension minister Torsten Bell last year told the FT that, under Turner, the commission had produced some of the most important and successful policies of the previous 25 years.

But since then progress has been lost, with the report pointing out that the proportion of self-employed people saving into a pension was half of what it was 30 years ago. Drake, who worked on the Turner Commission, accepted that UK politics’ more divisive climate perhaps complicates the group’s final recommendations, which are due out next year.

“We are already setting up discussions with [different stakeholders] . . . which is what Turner did as well. There are lots of things in today’s environment that are not as benign as they were back in 2004.”

Most self-employed people are not included in the auto-enrolment system, the UK government scheme that automatically places eligible employees into a workplace pension, which the Turner Commission had championed.

“There is an obvious hole in policy relating to the self-employed given the absence of auto-enrolment as a mechanism to save,”

said Sophia Singleton, head of defined contribution pension schemes at consultants XPS.

Separately, the government has previously said it would not raise the minimum auto-enrolment percentages in this parliament.

The interim report highlighted other inequalities among pension savers, including between men and women. Despite closing the gap in state pension entitlements, women in their fifties had nearly half as much in their private pension pots as men in the same age group, the report said.

The commissioners’ findings also underscored the fact that low- and middle-earners were most at risk of inadequate retirement incomes.

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“Every democracy gets the Politics it deserves” – Tej Parikh

Posted on May 19, 2026 by henry tapper

Is this irresponsible public discourse or  irresponsible journalism?

Some of my friends contribute to this argument, sometimes the argument is as important as the article.

You can of course click through to both to Tej Parekh’s article  and the comments that follow its publication on Linked in by Tej!

Isn’t the good thing of social media that it allows public discourse to happen within the reach of more of us? I have checked and this article has over 250 comments behind the FT pay wall. They are as varied and informed as those on Linked in (IMO).

This is how we are taking positions on important points, Tej finishes his article

Yes, Britain lacks good leaders. But there is some truth in the notion that every democracy gets the government it deserves.

I suspect that the democratic process is acted out today on social media platforms and whether they are behind or in front of paywalls, we want to get our positions benchmarked and honed by the thoughts of others.

I have not yet decided whether what is going on within the Labour party and the Government is good news to me! But we voted in this Government to govern us.

Despite my indecisiveness, I agree that every democracy gets the Politics and Government that it deserves!

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Can CDC be a step to fairer pensions for women?

Posted on May 19, 2026 by henry tapper

CDC can only have a minor impact on  pension gender inequality

CDC – a step to fairer gender pensions.

There are three ways for CDC to improve value for women’s money

  1. The attitude of employers, providers and government must change to put women on an equal footing to their male counterparts
  2. The service to women must take into account their needs, something that isn’t taught and needs to be learned – especially by men
  3. The product itself has to financially improve women’s retirement finances in terms of income, tax free cash and the spouse’s pensions received and left

Attitude to gender unfairness to women,

Andrew Young OBE explains that shortfalls in the fairness of attitude to women needs to be understood, “How differential will longevity be?”

 Torsten Bell, our pensions minister says that we should be “perky” that much of the recent increase of pension take up through auto-enrolment is because more women are taking up pensionable work.

Women should be taken more seriously for a number of reasons, not least because they live longer but still get paid shorter and at lower rates.

Those I’m working with reckon that over the whole of life, women regularly have been treated as liabilities to be paid a lower pension than men. This is based on reports by Prospect and others. It is infact well known.

Righting discrimination?

For many in DC pensions, the conversion from accumulation to decumulation meant paying women lower pensions for the pound in their pot.

This was the case for “money purchase” of an annuity, until 2012, when the European Court of Justice deemed that taking customers’ gender into account contradicted laws on discrimination. Our attitude is that where possible the unfairness should be righted, this was an example of a wrong being righted by a change in the law.

The position is that “fairness” that underpins CDC needs to “right underlying unfairness”. It should help women where it can, using what the law can grant providers.

Service to women

The service that is given to women and men must be appropriate and meet women’s specific needs.

There is much that those who provide support to those accumulating pensions and those drawing pensions need. Sensitivity to the different needs of the genders is important. We are dealing with a range of requirements.

For younger people much of the need is to understand what stands between them and a proper pension. For those who are older, the questions are about how to draw pension against cash and how to ensure that partners are protected in the event of early death. The answers to questions may be different for women and men and we need to be sensitive to this. Service must listen and learn from experience and is something we will focus on to make our service better.

The product that we call a CDC pension scheme must be fair to women

We asked our chief actuary, Chris Bunford what he’d say to the question “is CDC providing some fairness to women?” He wrote

” Once you’ve bought some CDC pension your future salary/contributions don’t affect the level of that accrued pension.  It will go up depending on scheme experience, but isn’t affected by any extra CDC pension you buy.

So, say you have two people aged exactly 30 who have accrued £1,000 pa of CDC pension with expected CPI increases.  One leaves the scheme (either permanently or for a short while, like parental leave).  They both retire at age 65.  Their £1,000 pa of CDC pension will revalue to the same amount at age 65.  The person who remained in service will continue paying contributions and will have bought more CDC pension since, so will end up with a higher pension from the scheme as you would expect.  But both of their “pre-30” pensions will revalue to the same amount at age 65.

Because we haven’t got a “Final Salary” link the CDC scheme is not as skewed to those who get high salary increases throughout their lives.  A gap in service just means a period of not earning new pension, it doesn’t affect accrued CDC pension.

And because we have age-related factors, we haven’t got older members being subsidised by younger members.  Our unisex factors mean we do have females being marginally subsidised by males due to their higher expected longevity.”

 We see our treatment of women within the rates we offer as influencing positively to women, their entitlements to pensions and to tax-free cash and we see the definition of dependents as critical to levelling women’s pensions up to mens

In conclusion

CDC cannot make retirement fair, but it can be fair itself and be a step to making pensions fairer for women.

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A focus on closing the gender gap in private retirement wealth

Posted on May 19, 2026 by henry tapper

A sneak peak of what the Pension Commission’s going to report on

The Guardian has an “outside pensions” view of what the Pensions Commission is going to say in its report this week. I am interested not just in it being interested in pensions but in the lack of interest in what the pension industry wants to hear!

Here’s a summary of what it’s heard from those on the Pension Commission

A shake-up of pensions in Britain must involve measures to close the gap in retirement savings between men and women, the revived Pensions Commission is to tell ministers.

According to the government-backed body, women approaching retirement have on average half the private pension savings of men, with a median pension wealth of £81,000 versus £156,000.

The commission, which is expected to publish its interim report on the long-term future of the retirement system this week, said it would look at how the government could cut the gender pension gap as part of its work towards a final report with recommendations, expected next year.

It said closing the gender gap in private retirement wealth was “not only a matter of fairness” but also that failing to do so risked fuelling a rise in pensioner poverty and damaging government finances.

First established under Tony Blair’s government in 2002, the Pensions Commission was revived by Keir Starmer last year, amid fears that a crisis in saving for retirement could mean today’s workers will be poorer in later life than the current crop of pensioners.

The relaunched commission is led by Jeannie Drake, who was a member of the original Blair-era panel, working alongside Ian Cheshire, the former chair of Barclays UK, and Nick Pearce, a professor of public policy at the University of Bath. These are not people the pension industry wanted, they are people that Government wanted.

They are also focussing on the inadequate levels of contribution (demands of 12% rather than 8% are common). It is  focussing on including those who are not auto-enrolled (mainly the self-employed. But first and foremost to the Guardian, t is focussing on women who stop saving when they stop working to have families

Its interim report will draw on data commissioned by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that says women suffer a “motherhood penalty”, as their pension contributions typically flatline after childbirth.

The IFS found that women contributed about £30 a week on average to a pension before having their first child – a level that remained unchanged six years later.

For men, however, savings rates grew from about £30 a week to more than £60 a week on average over the same time period.

Women are also more likely to work part-time or leave work entirely because of caring responsibilities, excluding them from automatic enrolment in workplace pension schemes.

The commission said the UK has the second-worst gender pensions gap among rich countries in the 38-member Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, behind only Japan, despite near-equal state pension outcomes for men and women reaching retirement age in 2026.

It said solutions would require a “joined-up approach”, involving reforms to pensions policy and the labour market, including access to childcare.

Lady Drake said:

“The evidence is clear. Women are approaching retirement with half the pension wealth of men, and without further action, this difference will persist.

“The gender pensions gap is not simply a reflection of the pay gap, it is shaped by a system that has not yet fully accounted for the realities of many women’s working lives, including career breaks for caring, part-time work, and the motherhood penalty we have identified.

“As this commission moves towards recommending solutions, it will be looking at pension policy measures which can help to reduce the gap – something I believe employers, pension providers and policymakers will need to work on together.”

I suggest that this is not what employers, pension providers and policymakers have taken too seriously in the past. My generation saw women as dependent on men in retirement and all too often women have not been looked after either by “men” or by the  Government that orders their society.

We wanted the new Pension Commission (2) to take on a problem as challenging as Pension Commission (1), but this challenge will be harder to find solutions to. The last commission came up with answers to problems that we knew we had, this one is asking questions over issues we have not properly understood.

 

 

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What is a multi-employer CDC scheme and what opportunities does it offer? Hymans Robertson

Posted on May 19, 2026 by henry tapper

 

What is a multi-employer CDC scheme and what opportunities does it offer?

You can read this on Hymans Robertson’s site  .The Authors are  Hannah English and Mark Stansfield ; Partner and Head of DC Corporate Consulting and Senior Actuarial Consultant

The past 18 months have seen significant developments in Collective Defined Contribution (CDC) pensions which could benefit millions of future savers.

The Royal Mail CDC scheme went live in late 2024, marking the UK’s first single-employer CDC scheme under the existing CDC legislation. Since then, momentum has continued. Legislation is now being finalised to allow for multi-employer schemes, with the first scheme to launch in mid 2027.

This is an exciting time in the pensions market. It also provides employers an opportunity to consider whether this type of arrangement could be right for them and their staff.

What is a CDC scheme and why does it present an opportunity?

A CDC scheme can be seen as a halfway house between a Defined Benefit (DB) scheme and a Defined Contribution (DC) scheme. Broadly, the key principles of its design are set out below:

  • Investment and longevity risks are pooled across all members of the scheme.
  • Pooling investment risk across generations allows for a higher allocation to grow assets for longer than in strategies that derisk investments as members approach retirement.
  • Pooling longevity risk means members who live longest are protected from running out of money, funded by those members who die earlier.
  • Members build up a level of pension for each year of service. The amount reflects the value of their contributions and the cost of providing the benefit.
  • Pension income is designed to increase each year and provide an income for life, more like DB, but it can decrease if the benefits become unaffordable.
  • Members trade some control, flexibility and the ability to pass on unspent pension on death, as they would in DC, in return for a more secure income for life.

A key aspect of CDC schemes is that, by pooling members and sharing risks, they have the potential to deliver better retirement outcomes than a DC scheme.

What is multi-employer CDC?

CDC can currently be delivered through single-employer schemes, such as the Royal Mail. Looking ahead, it will also be possible to deliver CDC through multi-employer schemes.

Multi-employer CDC schemes are expected to operate for “unconnected” employers in the same way to how DC master trusts work today. This could provide employers with the opportunity to:

  • Achieve lower operating cost than running a single-employer CDC scheme.
  • Outsource governance to the scheme provider.
  • Retain freedom to move away from CDC provision and leave the scheme in future.

Why should employers consider a CDC scheme for their employees?

Our research shows strong interest in CDC schemes among UK corporate pension decision-makers. 91% of respondents said they are likely to consider CDC or similar schemes for their business.

Some of the appeal includes:

  1. Higher pensions for members from the same contribution amount. A CDC scheme may provide between 20-50% better retirement outcomes for members, compared to other DC schemes.
  2. A focus back on pension income rather than a pension pot. Shifting the emphasis to income may help employees better understand their likely standard of living in retirement.
  3. Reduced decision-making for members at and through retirement. This can help make the retirement journey simpler for members.
  4. Life assurance benefits within the scheme. CDC schemes are exploring ways to provide life assurance benefits, such as a spouse pension and death-in-service cover, which most DC schemes do not offer.
  5. Potential for reduced costs for employers. CDC could allow employers to manage contribution costs while still supporting comparable or improved expected retirement outcomes compared to their current DC offerings.

CDC may not be right for everyone. There are also risks that must be considered. These include how a CDC scheme is communicated to members, and of the reduced flexibility members have in how they can access their pension at retirement compared with a DC scheme. However, CDC can offer an attractive alternative for employers that are looking to support a higher expected pension income at retirement for their employees, without increasing costs.

Employers therefore face an important question: does a DC pension arrangement still deliver the best outcomes for my employees, or could a CDC pension arrangement provide a stronger offering?

This article was first published by REBA.

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How can compliance become a competitive edge? Even AI cannot make it that!

Posted on May 18, 2026 by henry tapper

I came across this statement in an FT partnership document with some organisation which will remain nameless as the article has gone! This was the point of the article that came from the partnership.

As AI transforms communications – from messages to video – teams can shift from reactive oversight to smarter, more efficient, strategic control. How can compliance become a competitive edge?

This question fills me with dread. Do we really compete to be compliant? That doesn’t sound much more than a dystopian view of the world which George Orwell wrote about in “1984”. 1984 was in the future when  Orwell wrote it, it came and went and the human spirit has survived!

I hate the idea that we can compete with each other on compliance. It does not give us the opportunity to push against the status quo to get innovation ,

Because regulation always looks back and looks to constrain what is new. This is not bad, it is good, we need compliance to be on the right side of exploitation but to suppose that compliance is something you can compete on?

What can we agree on for AI as getting us compliant?

Here are 6 things I do agree on , as the use of AI to build a platform of compliance on which entrepreneurs can develop great produce. This is not my work, but the work of Nitzan Boyarsky of the Israeli technology group Sedric

The question is not how compliance becomes a competitive edge but how it is the basis of a business, AI can facilitate compliance but compliance is not an edge.

  1. You mitigate risks, early.

Well designed compliance programs and policies are meant to detect potential violations and risky practices early on. The earlier, the better. Whether it’s an affiliate marketer who failed to disclose their relationship to your company or an overpromise by a support staff member, compliance errors present costly legal and financial liabilities. But as a growing company experimenting with and launching new campaigns, mistakes and errors will happen. You need a way to quickly and proactively identify and address risks. In today’s world, the best way to catch risks early is to work with an AI-driven compliance tool that is trained to detect and remediate risk immediately. This compliance safety net can give you a huge edge and it’s best to start when your company is still small.

  1. You can grow faster.

Once you’ve reduced risks through good corporate governance and a streamlined compliance program, growth becomes much easier and more seamless. You can move faster and break fewer things. (Hopefully none, in fact.) If you are putting modern technology to use and have an automated system in place for monitoring and managing company wide compliance, scaling the system should be simple. Whether you’re adding new clients, expanding to new markets or partnering with another company, the system will be set up to grow with you and continue to offer automated ways to screen potential partners, identify risks, flag violations and implement fixes.

  1. You set the stage for global success.

Similarly, having a strong compliance program makes it much easier to expand to new countries. Compliance gets trickier as you scale because each country has a unique legal climate and requirements may vary greatly. It’s best to have a compliance system in place before this happens so that the growth can happen effortlessly. Ideally, you want to take advantage of a compliance tool that offers multijurisdiction and multi language monitoring to ensure that your company and affiliates are adhering to the specific policies and regulations of each jurisdiction and in any language.

  1. You establish a trustworthy brand.

In every industry, people want to work with companies they can trust. Want a strong brand reputation? Make sure you’re known for your values, transparency and ethical marketing practices. It’s a no-brainer and this can be a decisive factor in setting your company apart from the competition.

  1. You save time and resources.

Time is money, so whenever you implement policies or work with tools that increase efficiency, you’re contributing to your company’s bottom line. Today’s compliance technology is designed to automate many aspects of compliance and integrate easily into your teams’ existing workflows. With a minimal investment of employee time, you can set up systems that automate tasks such as monitoring affiliate compliance and helping ensure customer facing agents are compliant, in real time. An AI-driven tool like Sedric can even do this in hundreds of languages, with instant translation to English.

  1. You foster a company culture of excellence. 

Compliance is not just the responsibility of the compliance team, HR or legal department. It should be integrated into the company culture. As a core company value, it’s something to take into consideration in every aspect of the business from hiring decisions, mergers and acquisitions, product development, growth strategies and more. This helps prevent violations, but it also builds a positive work environment. When compliance is built into the ethos of your company, you help build employee trust and satisfaction.

Happy employees and high employee satisfaction means lower turnover and more employee loyalty. Plus, it helps you attract top talent to your company, specifically within the compliance department but throughout the company as well. Taken together, these present a huge competitive advantage.

 

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Private capital firms circle L&G – says the FT

Posted on May 18, 2026 by henry tapper

Legal and General headquarters sign with a colourful umbrella logo and blurred figure walking past.

You have to be as big and fearless as the Financial Times or as small but fearless as this blog, to publicise what people in the City are talking about, the breaking up or even the wholesale sell of L&G to someone else. Last week Emma Dunkley pointed out Legal and General as vulnerable to an offer from an American   insurer and finance house. Here Emma repeats the rumours in the FT’s Monday email.

It seems impossible for any UK insurer to carry out the task of dismantling our DB pension system without the help of America and its benign regulation of bulk purchase annuities.

You can read Emma directly on this link

It’s been a difficult couple of years for London-based Legal & General, the FTSE 100 insurer and asset manager.

L&G’s share price has been flat as new entrants and tight credit spreads have squeezed profits in its core market — sparking speculation over whether L&G could be sold or broken up, write Lee Harris and Emma Dunkley.

Analysts now question whether L&G’s dividend is sustainable and whether it can survive as a public company. City advisers told the FT that potential bidders, including insurers and alternative asset managers, had been running the rule over the business.

“It’s getting pretty real,” one US private capital executive said about groups drawing up plans to bid for L&G. “People are spending real money on this now.”

“It feels like we’re being dressed up for a sale,” said one current L&G insider. Core businesses, such as index funds in the asset management arm, were “keeping the lights on”. “But they know they’ve got a structural problem and they are trying to throw everything at it.”

Private capital executives told the FT that there were a host of strategic alternatives open to L&G — if it chose to pursue them — from selling off blocks of its sprawling insurance portfolio to offloading assets to reinsurers. It could also find a private capital partner to assume some of its pension risk transfer assets.

Potential bidders have also considered a full takeover of L&G, four people familiar with those discussions said, though any such transaction would be challenging and politically sensitive due to the size of L&G and its large holdings of gilts.

Still, chief executive António Simões told the FT he was not considering a break-up or sale. “There’s no discussions or anything else going on,” he said. When asked if L&G had been approached, he added: “I am 100 per cent focused on executing my strategy.”

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