Want to be the next Pensions UK Chair?

Posted on February 4, 2026 by henry tapper

The Chair of Pensions UK, Emma Douglas is off to be Chair of the Pensions Regulator and you can’t do both. So Pensions UK needs a change of Chair and this blog is always willing to give Pensions UK a helping hand. It includes the history of the Pensions UK and PLSA and the NAPF which they were in previous robes.

Dear Pensions UK member,

I am writing to invite Pensions UK members to apply to become the Chair of Pensions UK, and to help us achieve a better income in retirement for savers.

In recent years, we have been through a highly successful evolution which has seen us focus our resources on the areas where we add most value and insight to our members. Pensions UK: 2030 Ready outlines the changes we expect to see in pensions by the 2030s, how we’ll evolve Pensions UK to support our members in becoming ready for them and our pensions policy goals.

Our Chair plays a really important role, working actively to understand the needs of the membership and to support the Pensions UK executive in meeting them.

Candidates will have the integrity, impartiality and insight necessary to advise Pensions UK, lead Pensions UK’s Board, and to both support and hold the executive board members to account. Candidates should be commercially astute, with experience of business leadership. However, we are particularly keen to hear from individuals who are able to represent the breadth and depth of our membership, ideally with experience of running a pension fund.

Candidates are also expected to act as advocates and ambassadors for the progression of the issues that Pensions UK represents, and should have some experience of this and be confident spokespeople.

More information is available on our website. The deadline for applications is Friday 20 February 2026. The position is open to all our members and I hope we receive applications from individuals that reflect the diversity of our industry.

All the best,

Julian Mund
Chief Executive

 

 

 

 

Pensions UK: Your History

List of members in 1925For over a century they’ve been the voice of pensions, helping everyone achieve a better income in retirement. That aim echoes the strategic priorities of our membership and is what drives and inspires those that work for and with them.

Beginnings and growth

Their mission began on 18 January 1923 when the Association of Superannuation and Pension Funds was founded, born out of work six years earlier by a group of people involved in transport sector pensions, laying the foundations to the Finance Act 1921.

Even in the early days, the association’s objective of helping everyone achieve a better income in retirement was clear, and the 1930s saw the association successfully help shape policy so that war widows and orphans would get the same pensions tax benefits as employees.

The post-war years were a time of growth for the association. The first conference took place in 1934 but it was the 1950s when the event began to take hold and by 1963 it was an annual event. Its Local groups formed in the 1950s, and in 1967 the association became the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF).

The NAPF years

In the 1970s it first began offering training courses to its members and in 1978 its preeminent Investment Conference first took place.

The 1980s was the decade when it began supporting members with guides and codes of practice. In the 1990s it helped members through a turbulent time as significant regulatory change followed the Maxwell scandal. Many people were also leaving workplace defined benefit (DB) pensions for personal defined contribution (DC) products, which were less well understood by consumers.

At the turn of the new century some of the issues facing members included economic turbulence, corporate governance and pensions tax relief simplification. In 2008 the Pension Quality Mark was born, pioneering the standards that much of the industry meets today.

A big focus of this decade was supporting our Local Authority members with the dramatic change they were seeing in the LGPS, including the shift to a career average scheme in 2014 and later the formation of pools.

Road to modern Pensions UK

In 2012 the big news for pensions was the launch of automatic enrolment and then in 2015 the introduction of freedom and choice. It worked hard liaising with government and policymakers to support its DC members and their savers during this busy time. It also launched the DB Taskforce to look at the challenges facing its funded DB scheme members.

Another industry first this decade was the launch of the Pensions Infrastructure Platform, facilitating pension fund investment in infrastructure.

It was in 2015 that it rebranded as the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA), evolving to meet the needs of the modern-day pensions landscape.

The next few years saw the launch of the highly successful Retirement Living Standards and the Cost Transparency Initiative, one of its most downloaded resources. In 2020 it supported our members with the ramifications of the Covid-19 pandemic, and for a time its events and training became digital. Its influential Five steps to better pensions: Time for a new consensus campaign called for a path to increased automatic enrolment coverage and contributions by the 2030s. This is set against the backdrop of a current cost-of-living crisis, and it is supporting itsr members to provide extra support to savers.

Today and the future: Pensions UK – 2030 Ready

In 2025, it changed its name to Pensions UK. Its new name recognises the powerful role pensions play in the UK – in people’s lives and in the economy. And it reflects a significant period of change in our industry, in which pensions re being transformed by consolidation, the focus on investment in growth assets, and an urgent spotlight on the need for people to save more, to understand what their retirement savings are worth and to be supported and empowered to use them.

Today it represents over 1,300 pension schemes that together provide a retirement income to more than 30 million savers in the UK, including DB and DC schemes, master trusts and local authority funds. Together, they invest £2 trillion in UK and global assets.

Its events, training and conferences are some of the biggest and best in the industry and members have a full events calendar to choose from.

Its purpose, to help everyone achieve a better income in retirement, is clearer than ever through its policy campaigns including pensions dashboards, responsible investment and stewardship, local authority pensions, retirement choices, small pots, DC value for money, DB funding, member engagement.

 

As it looks ahead to the next 100 years, it  will continue working with members to drive policy, build networks, and provide guidance and support, to achieve a pensions framework that works and ensure that a better income in retirement is a realistic goal for everyone.

This is only a potted history. Find out more about the fascinating beginnings of Pensions UK below.

Its story

PLSA at 100: The past, present and future

17 October 2023

To celebrate the PLSA’s centenary it published PLSA at 100: The past, present and future. Inside it takes a brief stroll through the history of pensions and tell the story of how the PLSA came to be the association it is today, from its beginnings in 1923.

READ MORE 

Posted in pensions | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Are PuFINS for real? As real as most financial services!

Posted on February 4, 2026 by henry tapper

I like the idea of PuFIN but am not quite sure I’ve got this colourful bird. He’s standing on the rugged coast with Tower Bridge behind him and Windsor Castle sited between the Towers.

The painter clearly has a lot of artificial intelligence and so has the inventor of PuFIN.

So what are Public Institutions?

I found a public publication.

Stores of wealth held by the public to be sure.

But what are PuFINS?

Well I had never heard of them and nor had google till about page 6 when this turned up

The Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance (PuFin) is a joint initiative between the Open University Business School and True Potential LLP to help address these issues about the public’s understanding of financial management.

The Centre has four core areas of activity:

1. Developing and galvanising knowledge in the area of financial capability under the leadership of The True Potential Chair in Personal Financial Capability

2. Making financial education more pertinent and accessible. Utilising the expertise of True Potential LLP and the Centre’s academics we have launched – for free use by the public -three modules in personal financial management

  • Personal finance: Understanding the basics
  • Getting ahead of the curve: Understanding investments and risk
  • Personal finance: Understanding the industry and your rights

3. To increase our understanding of public finance issues and provide evidence of where we can make the greatest impact we are offering two True Potential PhD studentships to support the Centre.

4. To raise awareness of the issues that exist in the field of personal finance we disseminate our research to a wide finance and management audience.

Just shows how a dodgy acronym can lead down to a fantasy or a variety of stores of wealth. I am not sure my search for a real PuFIN has got me very far. The PuFIN’s  about as real as the AI artwork.Maybe its a metaphor for  the reality of financial services.

Receding as the blog goes on

 

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

Richard Smith asks Standard life about his age wage in retirement! Gen X get real.

Posted on February 4, 2026 by henry tapper

Richard Smith has made an important point. Many people build up DB pensions, many more build up DC pots and we all build up state pension.

We need to understand how people think about all their retirement saved money whether pot or pension. There is much we have which will not be found on the pension dashboard, our savings and property , shares and many other assets that form people’s estates but can’t we please find a way to help people understand their “pensions” as an age wage.

There is something here about Richard who is a Gen X pensioner, he became when when he lost his wife and she left him a pension. He has a DC pot (several pots actually) and he has a state pension building up to pay to him when he’s 67 (or is that 68?).

Life is not about financial products but what they do, what they pay into the bank account and the certainty people have that they’ll have income now and in the future. Gen X are keen to understand how the ones they have are looked after  (as Richard was when his wife died). We spend so little time thinking about what we call the “age wage” the total amount that comes to us when we need it as we get older.

We have served up freedom from pensions for the last 10 years but now the agewage is what people like Richard want to know about and what they hope they’ll get when they tap into the dashboard. Standard Life are doing their bit to help Standard Life savers save but are they saving pensions or just pots, will the dashboard answer that question?

Posted in pensions | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

What would happen to your life if this happened?

Posted on February 3, 2026 by henry tapper

I am afraid that this photo, left on my feed by an IT repairman, is rather improbable. Losing a laptop to coffee is something that may have happened to you, it has happened to me and there is no repairman or woman anywhere near you when it happens!

Why AI – which created this photo – got wrong is that the computer doesn’t remain offering you a picture when doused with coffee/tea or whatever. It stops sending you a home screen or any picture at all.

We live in fear of this happening as we are helpless when it does!

I think that for all the advice we have about viruses, the simplest enemy remains coffee!

 

 

Posted in pensions | Leave a comment

Inheritance tax will apply to pensions from April next year

Posted on February 3, 2026 by henry tapper

LCP have done more than any other consultancy to ensure the process of collecting IHT when due from pensions is fair and given time.

Thanks to the Lords and Baroness’ who contributed

The Executive summary between pages 3 and 5 explains the position that Government has landed on and the way in which the House of Lords provides input into legislation.

Thanks to LCP and to those who have led the debate in general. Much of their work has featured on this blog and Steve Webb has been vocal on the Pension PlayPen Tuesday coffee mornings.

 

 

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

Can pensions be stretched to finance all causes?

Posted on February 3, 2026 by henry tapper

Tom and Jo are as one and this will have to replace this morning’s Pension PlayPen coffee morning as a debating point. (I apologise – we ran out of runway for one week)

If Britain thinks it is alone in having its pension funds pulled by the economic pressures its country faces, then it should read Mary McDougall on Denmark. This from 28th January.

The reality is that we are not self-sufficient, whether British , Danish or consider ourselves as European. We are dependent on America. There was a fine program last night on the relationship of the BBC with the Russian Government which concluded that however bad it might seem now, Russia’s political and economic climate will over decades return to what we consider clement. America will become less antagonistic and pensions have to take long term views.

For many years we have seen the great enemy to pensions in this country as the failure of the sponsor to keep a DB scheme out of the PPF. But commentators such as John Hamilton point to a much more difficult problem for those facing and in retirement

TPR sanctioned low dependency is the self sufficiency target – that along with increased hedging means you’ve covered the covenant issue. But what about inflation – the insidious and more dangerous risk to the value of any pension (rewind to Roy Goode’s seminal report 1993). That’s the fundamental duty of the Trustee – provide a pension that remains relevant with the cost of living? Trustees with a low dependency surplus are duty bound to consider if a low risk run on will let them provide better inflation protection.

In the space of a few hundred words I have worked through a variety of views of what a pension scheme is here for but for anyone who has not determined how their retirement will be financed, the future is various.

For those who are not dependent on the markets but taxation for payment of pensions (and that includes those dependent on the state pension and that plus unfunded public pensions) the Treasury is the only covenant that matters.

For most of us, dependent primarily on pots of money we have saved, there is the future of our work, our pay and the willingness of our employers to invest in pensions for our later lives.

For our largest DC pots (the biggest two of which are now close to £100bn in assets held- Nest/Peoples) , to suppose they are immune from being stretched by the various causes that the Danes and British quoted in this article, is wrong.

I would expect pensions to remain open and to enjoy the collective scheme’s “open scheme  sweet spot”. This is beautifully explained by Derek Benstead’s diagram.

(TAS 300 should be a historic document of the fate of our DB schemes).

The only time that a Pension Scheme fails is when it closes and we are beginning to see how easily we accepted that failure. Now we ponder the future pension and how it recaptures the open scheme sweet spot!

But our future pensions cannot do all the things that we want them to do, if we simply shift money into passive global equity funds that are lifestyled to annuities, that is a different type of failure which simply good enough for our fast maturing DC schemes. We need our retirement savings schemes to become pension schemes again and that is what this Pension Schemes Bill and the UMES CDC pension schemes should be about.

So my contribution this morning, when we should be having a 10.30 coffee morning is this blog, a reminder that pensions need to be all things to all of us, because we all aspire to retire on pensions one day!

Posted in pensions | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

John Hamilton talks of the insurance of a pension invested for growth

Posted on February 3, 2026 by henry tapper

John Hamilton leaves for Scotland

Here is the blog I wrote on the 24th of January a year ago. It contains the outline of the first and only time I’ve ever heard John Hamilton deliver a talk on pensions. It so influenced me last year that my team still talk about Melton Mowbray moments. This morning I will be listening to John Hamilton for a second time.

He will be speaking at the Londoner Hotel to a group of investment gurus (I don’t count myself as one). That event will be under Chatham House but I hope that John will let me do what I did this time last year and recount his arguments. For now, enjoy the Melton Mowbray speech delivered in a pie factory!

The insurance of an invested pension

John Hamilton and I parted Melton Mowbray , John for the north, me for the south. I had two hours in front of me, he seven – and the prospect of a storm. We had spent much of the day together discussing two key words – insurance and investment.

Let me explain how John sees investment.

As we walked down the road to the pie factory we talked about it. He saw our brisk walk as getting it out and making things happening. Sitting on the sofa and worrying about the consequences of going for a walk was de-risking was opting out of doing anything. Walking was investing in our futures, sitting on the sofa an analogy for wasted years of de-risking,

John  talked about insurance when he spoke to East Midlands PLSA, reminding us that Lloyds of London allowed our forefathers to venture all over the world , trading and investing in products that could be put to use in the UK to invest for the future. Without Lloyds, the venturers would not have had the courage to get things done.

These slides are not about Stagecoach  but about how he and the people he works with look at pensions as an investment backed by the insurance of certainty.

Insurance is a backstop that allows us  to invest. It is the background  to the end itself, the capacity to sit down on the sofa is not the end itself, that is with the next generation. But it’s the comfort that a pension brings, in possession.

Insurance is the backstop to allow us to invest even if we feel we are coming to our end. In John’s head , his children are why he invests and why he needs the insurance of his pension which is getting closer by the day. He needs the next generation to pass on his investment understanding, an understanding he has gained from generations who are now in retirement. Like me, he can see his ending but like me he wants to pass his enthusiasm on.

He has learned from other trustees to act on what he knows and understands. He told the story of the investment manager who claimed to have done well (and deserve a performance fee)  by shrinking the value of assets over one year by 26%. Other managers had lost 28%.

This was not simple thinking, this was reverse correlation and he and his colleagues weren’t so interested. Hitting targets through prudent management, covering pension liabilities with incomes from the assets became the simple thinking of assets. Investment meant having the luxury not just to stay open but to offer more with the excess created.

Excess is the nice problem of investment, a problem that we give ourselves through investment because we have the insurance of doing it over time and collectively. Pensions should create growth for the economy. Pensions are a gift we give ourselves by choosing to participate in a collective scheme.

Sadly, much that was known by previous generations has been lost. The last 20 years have seen schemes having to adopt insurance as the end itself leaving investment behind. The mantra of de-risking has become the reason for pension regulation to a point that we have lost two decades of growth. When pensions drove growth , Frank Field referred to them as an economic miracle but we have exchanged that vision of investment and insurance for what we have today.

John Hamilton sees the selling of equities and gilts to secure future payments with corporate bonds. Pension funds compete with the Government in the sale of gilts pushing yields up as pensions become part of the economic trouble rather than the “miracle”.John Hamilton told us that he couldn’t find a worse way to organise the “end game”.

Against this doom-ridden view of “de-risking” pensions, Hamilton was able to propose an alternative where DB pensions are installed rather than DC pots. This is the world which Local Government Pension Schemes still prosper, where private pension schemes that did not go the LDI route are now prospering and where investment goes hand in hand with the back-stop of insurance – the insurance created by having done this over years.

Investment and insurance are the two drivers of pensions for Hamilton. If we could go back to delivering certainty and valuable pensions to individuals, then we could call pensions economic miracles. I’m not sure that it was John Hamilton or me who brought Frank Field up but as I watched John disappearing on his 7 hour journey into the storm, I thought of Frank and how proud he would have been to hear John’s speech and the help John gave people like me.

I suspect he’d have enjoyed a  Melton Brown pie too.

Simple things- good to eat – Melton pies

Posted in pensions | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The West’s all in on artificial intelligence – it’s called “conviction economics”!

Posted on February 2, 2026 by henry tapper

Kevin Warsh
‌
 ‌This article is from an email sent me by this man

Since Trump’s announcement late last week that he would nominate Kevin Warsh to chair the Federal Reserve, the debate over Warsh’s qualifications has largely come down to whether he is a hawk or a hypocrite. Fans tend to share his deep, long-held suspicion of quantitative easing; critics see him as an opportunist who dispensed with his hard-money views when they became a barrier to professional ascent.

I’m less interested in Warsh’s motivations than in whether his views, as he states them now, make sense. His monetary prescription is dead simple: for higher growth and lower inflation, cut interest rates and shrink the central bank’s balance sheet.

Warsh thinks lower rates are consistent with lower inflation because AI is sparking a productivity revolution. From a recent interview:

The difficulty of [AI] for policymakers — let’s say central bankers, let’s say fiscal authorities — is that the economy is going to be growing, but it will not show up in the productivity statistics. So we are going to have to make a bet: is the economy becoming much more productive . . . my simple version of this is, everything technology touches gets cheaper.

So let’s say you are a central banker . . . if you are looking at the [economic] data, my view is you are backward-looking; you are going to be late. You are not going to realise the country is able to have non-inflationary growth faster. So you are going to have to make a bet. And the closest analogy I have in central banking is Alan Greenspan in 1993 and 1994, when the internet revolution was with us. He believed based on anecdotes and rather esoteric data that we weren’t in a position where we needed to raise rates . . . as a result we had a stronger economy, we had more stable prices.

What is most striking here is the notion that the US should bet on much higher productivity without seeing it in the data. This leap is what my colleague Chris Giles calls “conviction economics,” in contrast to the data dependency practiced by Chair Jay Powell.

Warsh thinks that shrinking the balance sheet is consistent with higher growth because he thinks that money printing — which is what he says balance sheet expansion amounts to — creates inflation by pumping up the financial system, without supporting growth in the real economy:

The Fed . . . should abandon the dogma that inflation is caused when the economy grows too much and workers get paid too much. Inflation is caused when government spends too much and prints too much. Money on Wall Street is too easy, and credit on Main Street is too tight. The Fed’s bloated balance sheet, designed to support the biggest firms in a bygone crisis era, can be reduced significantly. That largesse can be redeployed in the form of lower interest rates to support households and small and medium-size businesses.

Though Warsh does not say so explicitly, this is a bet, too. It’s a bet that the Fed’s $6.5tn balance sheet can be made significantly smaller without reducing the supply of credit to households and small businesses, and without causing a liquidity shortage that leads to a financial crisis, big or small. I don’t believe we have reliable data to guide us here, either.

The financial system would not require so much liquidity if it did not have to absorb mountains of government paper issued to support vast deficits. But Warsh believes that the deficits are mostly caused by the larger Fed balance sheet, not the other way around:

The Fed often presents itself as humble and technocratic, hewing closely to the remit. They say they take fiscal policy decisions as given, and then react. But, it’s no longer obvious whether monetary policy is downstream or upstream from fiscal policy. Irresponsibility has a way of running in both directions.

Fiscal dominance — where the nation’s debts constrain monetary policymakers — was long thought by economists to be a possible end-state. My view is that monetary dominance — where the central bank becomes the ultimate arbiter of fiscal policy — is the clearer and more present danger.

The test will come when one of these two bets begins to go wrong. If he convinces the Open Market Committee to bring down rates further in the face of stable employment and above-target inflation, and then inflation rises, how will he respond? If the balance sheet is shrunk and money markets seize up, what will he do? For 15 years Warsh has been able to criticise the Fed from the outside, with nothing at stake. Now he has to put his money, and ours, on the table.

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

Too rich for pensions? Return to the fold and dignity in retirement.

Posted on February 2, 2026 by henry tapper

There is a school of thought that is brilliantly articulated in this post

The argument is set out below by Jo and Nova Wealth

From April 2027, unused pension assets are expected to fall inside the inheritance tax net on death. For deaths after age 75, your pension could be hit by a triple whammy:

🔴 40% inheritance tax.

🔴 Loss of the Residence Nil Rate Band RNRB for net estates of £2m+ (at a rate of £1 for every £2 of assets).

🔴 45% income tax when your beneficiaries withdraw this money.

This isn’t a headline rate though, but it can easily apply to wealth for many families with reasonably-sized pensions and other savings, a modest family home, and adult children as beneficiaries.

The decade long rule of “leave your pensions until last” is no longer going to be automatically optimal for many. Drawing on pensions earlier, and paying some income tax throughout retirement, may now materially reduce the total lifetime tax paid by families.

As ever, this is a planning issue, not a product one – so you should seek robust and well-considered advice, that models your full financial future. (Tax rules are subject to change, outcomes depend on individual circumstances, seek proper professional advice).

Too rich for pensions?

I know many rich people who have swapped DB pensions for DC pots so that they can have wealth to pass between generations.

For the very richest, this may prove a horrendously expensive mistake and if I had been advised to do this by an adviser , I would have asked if the chances of the beneficial tax rules that surround wealth in a SIPP wrapper could withstand the arrival of a Labour Government.

Along with VAT on private education fees, the IHT on unspent DC pension pots is most hated by those with excess money to their needs. Both education and retirement income can be “bought out of” so exclusivity is achieved.

The Labour Government has raised the bar.  There is a possibility that a future Government might reverse the tax increase- but I doubt it will happen. Because there really is no public outcry against these taxes (in the way that other tax rises have been shouted out – even inheritance tax on farms). Labour’s popular taxation increases prove resilient under right-wing parliaments.

The message is to make the state education system better, our health system the NHS and our pension system delivered by a few funds and by the tax payer. You can of course live outside education, health and pensions but you must recognise there is a high price to pay for exclusivity.

Pensions should bring us together

Although occupational DB pensions had pernicious executive sections, they were fundamentally collaborative and collective in investment.

I expect pensions will return to these two “C’s” with CDC where , were the rich to stop whingeing for a moment, they’d see that their better health will give them more by way of pension, simply because rich people live longer.

CDC pensions are not exclusive, they are inclusive of the boss and the the meanest paid, they all share in the deferred pay offered by what is a mutual endeavour.

It may not be possible for the rich and old to use CDC and they may choose instead to use an annuity. Either way, they will join a mortality pool that will include all types of “lives” living all kinds of lifestyles.

Here there is a democracy that is set against the right wing individuality of Conservative and Reform and covers Reform, Liberal and Labour politics. It also covers smaller parties like Hilary Salt’s (fighting for a parliamentary seat in Manchester).

I would ask those who are fed up that their pension’s wealth is facing ruinous tax to consider what Hilary had to say as she retired from a lifetime as a pension’s actuary

The link doesn’t work but I think you will have got the gist by now!

Posted in pensions | 2 Comments

Rory Murphy with the VFM lads – collective pensions as I imagine them!

Posted on February 2, 2026 by henry tapper

This article was originally published on Saturday but as no-one read it then, here it is on a Monday, Rory is a serious voice for the union and Darren and Nico do a good job allowing him to explain how unions and mutuals can return retirement saving to deferred pay.

I hope this will encourage a few more to listen the pod advertised below.

As I nipped around the South East of England yesterday, I found myself by chance on a train without a working laptop but with the chance to plug into a podcast. Lately, I have enjoyed the VFM podcasts and the promise of this one was of a quite new voice. I read Rory Murphy when I can as he speaks of the 6m employees in this country who are in unions and for the trusts he’s trustee too and he is determined that pensions return to the co-operative mutuals that I remember when there were 14m unionists and had more of a voice.

I wanted to listen to Rory Murphy, was prepared to put up with some Arsenal gloat ism  and plugged in where ever I could get a signal

For the first time ever, I felt moved at the end of the podcast to write to the guest and thank him for what he said and how he said it (and to congratulate Nico and Darren). You can listen to it here #144. For once I won’t complain about an 18 minute overrun.

When you’ve done your 78 minutes, you’ll have heard from someone who is quite apart from advisers , insurers and asset managers and whose interest is for the people whose pensions he is trustee of.

He needs not be rude about master trusts as it is quite obvious that he sees their commercial imperative as quite at odds with value for their savers value for money.

It is becoming obvious over the past few years that the big winners in terms of durability are two master trusts in Nest and People’s that do not have a commercial imperative to reward shareholders but are mutual- in Nest’s case it is serving Britain’s employers who have no interest or budget to go further while People’s it’s imperative is to maximise the member’s outcomes as like Nest it has no shareholders to reward.

Murphy’s dry humour feeds through. He points out that it would be in the interests of small DB schemes to form co-operatives to buy services collectively and he advocates mutual ownership as a way of delivering pensions in general. He does not go so far as praising DC savings (though that is what this podcast has been about) , instead he argues that value for money is in the eyes of the member. It is to a large extent in the deferred pay that the pension offers (and this will become more obvious for DC with the pensions dashboard). But it goes beyond that for Murphy. He wants the pension scheme to engender financial well-being and he discusses the work he has done for MNOPF and others helping employees to understand not just money but what the security of pensions can bring them.

I have to admit to finding myself welling up somewhere outside Hayes and Harlington as I made my way to a meeting with a large firm of actuarial consultants to explain Pensions Mutual. Pensions Mutual is being formed with the help of the FCA’s mutual unit to allow employers and members to benefit from CDC by letting them influence the management of the CDC scheme and benefit from the success that results.

I had the idea before reading Rory but the determination to see it through- from reading this article

 

We aren’t on the same page but we’re writing the same chapter! Rory is doing good things for the unions in giving them energy to make the nearly 5,000 remaining DB schemes (mainly small) , work for their members and not just the City of London , Wall street and Bermuda.

I would hope the unions will pick up the baton (that they have often dropped) and look to have a say in the future. We cannot go back to the broken model of DB but we can work together through co-operative mutuals to deliver VFM through improved deferred pay.

I am pleased that Rory Murphy can also see beyond money when talking about value. Many people find value from small pensions which do big things for them and many people are sad about having big DC pots they look like leaving to the tax-man having got little fun from their wealth.

Somewhere in the middle are most of us and the sanity of such people was to be found in the consolation that Rory could give his fellow gooners. Perhaps he’d read this article on the BBC website, I read it later that evening!

Guardian’s take on Arsenal’s digital overdose is here.

It was a good weekend for Arsenal!

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