I am pleased to have bumped into someone new in the work I’ve been in all my life!
Now that’s a new look at an old problem.
I don’t have an answer to Timothy Lancaster , but I’d be pleased to hear from readers what they have as a reaction.
The corridor could be your home – don’t be shy – we’re all in it together!
This is where last Thursday and Friday. I moved slowly down a corridor at Wexham Accident and Emergency unit and would, had after 24 hours I’d been released, have eventually found my way to a ward.
There was an aged man in front of me, an aged woman behind me, we had no privacy. I came in by ambulance , I left by bus to Slough and then home.
But it was my saving. In the 24 hours I spent I was in my day clothes and I went for two scans to decide what was wrong with my brain that I had been told was a stroke but found out was a seizure. Not only was my problem discovered but I am on drugs that make me better.
If I had not gone through the agony of A&E I would be waiting to have these scans on June 23rd at a Central London teaching hospital.
My point is this. In A&E you are an emergency and treated as such. It is the way that you get the attention that the GP system simply doesn’t get you.
And here is the crunch of the debate we are having in these weeks after Christmas about how we treat our ill. There were people I spoke to in those 24 hours who were in a bad state physically and mentally but not one patient was making a fuss, we new this was what we had to go through and we found a way to make the best of it.
There was no hot food, there were sandwiches from time to time. There was very little charges so we couldn’t always keep phones alive, for most of us, there were no toilets accessible. Yes , this is not what you expect from hospitals but it is what you will get these days.
But for all the complaints, we find a way to get through it, we are all in it together, here are the numbers (thanks the Sun)
As I suspected, I was in a relatively well off neck of the woods (the South East) but we are all in this together and the sooner we recognise it could happen to us or to our closest, the better.
Posted in pensions
Tagged AE, Corridor, How we pull through, NHS, Slough, south East, Wexham
4 Comments
A wake up and a shake up for advisers and trustees in their “end game”
Ros Altmann
John Hamilton
William Mcgrath
Gurbani Swamni-Leach
Two amendments are going through the House of Lords, framed by Baroness Altmann of Tottenham. I am proud to have played a part in this work but recognise the bulk of the momentum has been created by Stagecoach’s DB Pension, Aberdeen Plc and the C-Suite of William McGrath. Here are the amendments
The likelihood is that these amendments will be debated on Monday but that is not to diminish their importance.
We are in an age where value for money counts in pensions. But there has been no VFM assessment of the buy-outs and buy-ins that have followed the uptick in the funding position of DB plans since the 2022 budget fiasco. As William McGrath presented to those of us interested in TAS 300, it is the VFM assessment of any deal done as the Defined Benefit End Game.
Until the Stagecoach/Aberdeen deal, the credible alternatives to an insured buy in and then out were confined to kicking that decision down the road. It has not been till the path the Stagecoach trustees and the Aberdeen management went down, that we understood what “putting policy into practice” meant. Now, no decision will be quite the same
I am very proud that those within William’s C-Suite have got this far and created a credible alternative. We sat yesterday in a posh room and spent two and a half hours thinking about what best to do with the past (Defined Benefit). We got s better understanding of run-on and other alternatives
We talked to of the future for pensions and discussed growth in a CDC world. CDC is projected to improved member outcomes by at least 50% versus DC. It does so by investing in more growth for longer.
DC is very expensive , the cost of certainty in DB is 35-40% higher than CDC. We left the meeting ponder which is better for a saver. Do you want £10,000 pa (certain) in DB when it could be with £13,000 pa in CDC (invested in growth). There are some big conversations to go on beyond the room we were in , involving key players in private and public pensions. The next of those big discussions is now expected to go on in the House of Lords on Monday night when TAS 300 will (we hope) be discussed.
Posted in pensions
Tagged Business, Business and Economy, CDC, corporate risk, DB, dc, de-risking, Defined benefit pension plan, DWP, Pensions, Retirement, Ros Altmann, TPR, VFM, workplace Pensions
3 Comments
Leaseholders are not getting protection and it’s not good enough.
https://www.freeleaseholders.org.uk/
Earlier this week I pointed to statistics showing that all over the country, the owners of leasehold properties are finding reselling of their leaseholds harder. Indeed many leaseholders are finding they cannot get the money they paid for the leasehold many years ago.
This is not in “real” terms -eg inflation adjusted terms- people can’t get the amount in pounds they paid for the leasehold (usually with the help of a mortgage). I will continue to cover the work of Harry Scoffin and those who work with him in supporting the case for leasehold to be reformed so that leaseholders are given some protection.
Here is Harry’s latest update, posted on social media and reposted by me as the very least I can do.
Thanks Harry Scoffin and those you work with at Free Leaseholders.
https://www.freeleaseholders.org.uk/
Emma – be chair for pension regulation – not just our saving!
Emma Douglas – Chair
Our new chair of The Pensions Regulator will be Emma Douglas.
I’ve been working with her since I was at Eagle Star selling corporate DC plans against here when she was at Threadneedle.
Both of us were under one owner – firstly BAT and then Zurich but we had different approaches to “defined contribution” both in how we represented our companies and in who we were successful with!
Threadneedle was in those days an institutional investment company housed in an insurance company, Eagle Star was an insurance company looking to break into the world that was opening up as defined benefit schemes started closing to future accrual.
Emma today is an institutional icon , speaking for the NAPF, PLSA and now Pensions UK as well as heading pensions at Aviva. I am very pleased that she is to become our regulatory chairperson. I suspect we know each other quite well by now!
She will be an able successor to Sarah Smart and taking on from the little known Kirsten Baker who has been interim Chair these past few months
But she is taking to the position a very different view of what is wrong with DC than that expressed by the Pension Minister. This headline is from Professional Pensions.
The problem for the Pensions Minister is that “DC” is about workplace savings but not about pensions. The future Chair of Pensions Regulator has been of a different view.
Indeed at one point the pensions trade organisation called itself the Pension and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) . It has pulled in its wobbly lip to “Pensions UK” but at its last conference in Manchester, Emma Douglas and her executive made it clear that the deficiency was not pensions but contributions. This led to ongoing badinage between Zoe Alexander of the Pensions UK and Torsten Bell, during and following his speech.
Reading the account of Emma Douglas comments (14 January) at a Work and Pensions Committee (WPC) pre-appointment meeting as the government’s “preferred candidate” for the role of chair at The Pensions Regulator (TPR),
Douglas raised concern around younger generations retiring with only DC savings.
She said while the Pension Commission is looking at adequacy, which is “absolutely the right thing to look at”, unless action is taken “we will have generations of pensioners that will be poorer than ones now and I worry about lost generations”.
She noted with DB schemes in a “better position now”, if she were to become chair at TPR she would look at making sure DB benefits are paid and how surplus is extracted in the “safest way possible” to ensure the “best protection for saver benefits”.
However, she highlighted her concern around the current environment noting she has “real concerns” about adequacy.
When pressed for what she saw as priorities she was explicit about what she thought TPR should be focussing on
Douglas added focus for TPR in the coming years will be on the value for money framework, ensuring the correct models are in place for governance and trusteeship, as well as tackling “egregious and horrible” pension scams, which she said are a “shocking worry for the industry”.
My impression is that the major projects that the pension will be involved in , in 2026 will not be around DC VFM or scamming (these appears to be with FCA) but with collective DC and with changes pending from the Pension Schemes Bill. CDC has some of the regulatory apparatus of DC but most of the benefits of DB – specifically DC that pays pensions!
Thus far, Pensions UK and Aviva have been quiet about the rise of CDC as the means of increasing pensions for ordinary workers putting money by through payroll saving.
I hope that after 30 years working in the same space and for organisations with similar aims, I will be able to convince Emma of the Pension Minister’s view, that it is pensions and not just pension contributions that need to go up!
Employers (especially those with high numbers of low earning employees) have been hurt by increases in national insurance. I hope that we can find ways to help low earners with low pots to move to DC pension schemes, whether through default decumulation or wholesale migration to whole of life multi-employer (UMES) CDC schemes.
I very much hope that Emma can be won over to focus on pensions – not just saving!
Black Rock’s view of the world – streamed this week on the Pension PlayPen
BlackRock’s take on the world is delivered here by Antony Manchester
A full house as usual to hear the views of one of the world’s financial might’s. You can download the video from this link
There is no doubt that the world is fragile and this video was one where the audience were very much in listening mode.
Can I suggest that you give BlackRock your time? If you would like to follow up, let me recommend…You can download this update from this link.
If you went to the PLSA (now Pension UK) Investment Conference in Edinburgh, you may take this view…
“Too tired to work , too poor to retire” – a message to the Pensions Commission.
The Pensions Commission (II) is sitting and will be for the next year. It will be receiving information from a number of sources as it thinks about how to reorganise the financing of Britain’s retirements. It is no doubt a target that the FT has for this heavyweight read on the problems facing not just the UK but Europe and America , as demographics change and our capacity to pay for a longer ageing population is strained.
When we take the phrase “generous state pensions”, we can still distance Britain (though ours are due to rise as others fall)
But to see the state pension as the determinator of poverty or wealth would be wrong. There are many more nuances. This is charting the revenue people get back from the State in payment to bank accounts but there is also financial welfare, healthcare and subsidy of housing costs to consider in my question “can we afford our nation getting old?”.
For those of us who haven’t got access to the FT “big read”, I include this free share and you can email henry@agewage.com if this link wears out.
For those who don’t click, here’s the conclusion of the article.
Some economists believe that a far simpler solution to Europe’s pension peril would be to revive its sluggish economy, which has grown at around 1.5 per cent per year over the past five years, compared with around 2.5 per cent for the US.
“The basic problem is that the economy hasn’t grown fast enough,” says Rupert Watson, global head of economics at Mercer. “It’s not what pensioners get is causing the problem — it’s the lack of economic growth.”
That is not a happy conclusion for those who are at or nearing the end of their careers and hoping they will be on a cruise line of comfort going forward. It is not like that. Last Thursday night and Friday I lay on an ambulance bed in a corridor in a Slough accident and emergency area. I at 64 was young. We do not have an NHS that can offer an emergency service to those who are growing old and this is as much part of the stress for older people as cash in hand.
Here is my friend Tony Watts explaining what the FT’s conclusion means for the readers of his daily email
The questions we have as we get close to retirement are well known to those on the Pensions Commission.
These aren’t tomorrow’s questions, they are today’s. They really are about how we care for our elderly now. The strategic question that ends the FT big read is matched by Tony Watt’s statement. We may feel like the woman staring at us over the washing up or like the old folk in the picture below, but either way – there is nothing that can let us dodge the question
Can Europe still afford its generous pensions?
It’s why we must so dedicate ourselves to ensuring our pension money is paid to generations to come as effectively as we can.
That’s why my blog’s strapline reads like this….
Jesal Mistry leaves L&G for Apollo – what’s going on in DC investment?
I am confused about Apollo’s intentions in investing in the UK DC Market. I am confused by L&G’s top DC investment person is finding a new home with them!
Corporate Adviser make this their main story..
Legal & General’s head of DC Investment Jesal Mistry has joined Apollo Global Management as a managing director for UK defined contribution.
Mistry has been at L&G for nearly seven years, holding multiple positions throughout his time there, starting as senior business development director and progressing to becoming intern head of DC investment for nearly a year, until taking on the most recent position.
He joined L&G from Hymans Robertson, where he was for nearly three years, joining as a senior DC investment consultant and leaving as head of DC scheme design and provider evaluation.
He’s also had roles at Aon, Barclays, Capita and Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).
In a LinkedIn post, Mistry said: “I’m delighted to be joining Apollo Global Management, Inc. as Managing Director, leading DC across UK and Europe. With the DC market evolving rapidly, Apollo are uniquely positioned to deliver outstanding value and outcomes.
“I’m really looking forward to working with you all and getting started in my new role.”
But I’m unclear what Apollo are going to do in the UK DC market that isn’t being done by his former employer L&G or WTW or Aon?
He is one of the few people who has disconnected from me on linked in and I’d ask him to get back in touch so I can explain the Apollo proposition when it arises. Former head of Scottish Widows Jeff Sayers is there and there is huge strength in the USA.
My hope is that we can have progress in DC pension investment – whether on accumulation of in the payment of pensions or equivalent. CDC is a variant of DC investment and I look forward to finding out from L&G later in the month what their thinking is (though I will be under NDA so nothing yet on here).
It is important that we have a proper debate on what we can do in the UK and if we have an American firm such as Apollo investing in DC pension investment management, I look to hearing new thinking, from a firm famous for being “alternative”
Get back in touch Mr Mistry! We want to know what you and Mr Sayers are up to! Britain needs an enhancement in its DC – whether collective or retail investment!
Us older folk don’t want the world (or even Greenland).
Thanks to Jonathan Guthrie for lighting up a wet and windy January morning when the thought of a self-assessment hangs over me and I suspect many other older folk. Here is a ray of light!
I am not retired but I can manage on less in my sixties for reasons rehearsed by Jonathan
The Oldies Expeditionary Force is an important but little-remarked aspect of London mass transit. We set out after 9am from the suburbs “to go up to Town” for fun or occupation. Many of us swipe our free passes apologetically as we mingle with paying travellers. Our embarrassment is misplaced.
Senior railcards and 60+ Oyster cards need to be carefully used, their times useable are different but they will be in use this morning as I travel up to Aberdeen for a meeting (I mean the asset manager though I have booked a trip to Edinburgh by train this week (£58 return to get to the Pensions UK conference in March – being elderly helped when booking yesterday).
Jonathan’s essential point is that the equivalent standard of life maintained after packing work in , is easier the more you used to earn. That’s because things that were expensive and affordable when fully at work , become less expensive when work is no longer a necessity.
Part of it is that rich people don’t generally rent and generally get their kids off their hands (education wise).
It is surprising how savings can mount up. The biggie is liable to be contributions to the pension funds you are now drawing on. Statisticians also assume most better-off retirees have paid off mortgages and covered the cost of raising any children.
And as the big liabilities decrease so the multifarious small ones aren’t a feature of the bank statement at the end of the month
Lower income means lower income tax. Travel may be discounted or free. Eye tests and prescriptions are also gratis. The latter is just as well — the older you get, the more minor ailments you find yourself citing during grumbling contests with peers.
I went through the various prescriptions I get free with my doctor yesterday, I realise how well the elderly are treated. I don’t want to say that, I want to say that with gratitude!
These are numbers from Pensions UK, that people who read this column know all about but those who read Jonathan in the FT may be unaware. The Pensions UK have done a great thing by getting into bed with Loughborough University to work out what we need in retirement and their estimates are of importance to everyone from pension consultants to those in Government and those working for the Government in the Pension Commission.
The real cost of retirement living is very different in real terms than the cost of being fully at work and bringing up a family and that is as it should be.
And from 66, or 67 or 68 (depending how old you are ) you will get a state pension which should be over £12,000 pa whatever income you were on. That means that you will only be “missing by a mile” if you had expectations of what Pensions UK call a “comfortable life” and then only if you have little private pension and savings. For most of us – an equivalent retirement income, as Jonathan has explained to us, is all we really want or feel fair. And here about half of us are in the right place.
Of course there are many people who will be comfortable from pensions and they will have Government pensioned careers , but they are not the usual Brit, most of us have a bit of everything and many of us have very little pension indeed.
I will finish with Jonathan’s comment , he asks for a little tolerance of us old folk
For the moment, “Baby, we’ve earned it!” is the best I can do.
Face it, haters. A triple lock and a free bus pass are very little for older Brits to ask for in a world where one septuagenarian American is demanding he should be given Greenland.
What are our Lords up to with “Pension Schemes” this week?
This from the “on the money” Pension Age which keeps us up to date with the Pension discussions.
Peers query mandation and LGPS powers as Pension Schemes Bill enters HoL committee stage
By Callum Conway
House of Lords (HoL) peers have raised concerns over the scope of government powers, the treatment of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), and the Pension Schemes Bill’s reliance on secondary legislation on the first day of committee-stage scrutiny.
Opening proceedings, peers debated a proposed new ‘purpose clause’, tabled by Viscount Younger of Leckie and supported by peers including Lady Stedman-Scott and Baroness Bowles, which aimed to set out clear objectives for the bill.
These included delivering higher and more sustainable returns for savers, improving value for money, addressing fragmentation, enabling the responsible use of pension scheme surpluses, and strengthening transparency and consistency across the system.
Supporters of the amendment argued that the bill was a “framework” or “skeleton” piece of legislation, containing extensive regulation-making powers but limited detail, making it difficult for parliament to assess how those powers would be used in practice.
They warned that without a clear statement of intent on the face of the bill, trustees, regulators and schemes could be left uncertain about the direction of travel for pensions policy.
In particular, several peers expressed unease around provisions relating to value for money, surplus extraction, asset allocation, and the potential future mandation of investments, arguing that these issues would largely be determined through secondary legislation with limited parliamentary scrutiny.
However, responding on behalf of the government, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Minister of State, Baroness Sherlock, rejected the need for a purpose clause, arguing that it could create legal uncertainty and that the bill already set out clear policy intentions through its individual clauses, explanatory notes, and impact assessments.
The minister stressed that the legislation was consistent with previous pensions acts and was not a framework bill, but rather a package of targeted reforms designed to improve outcomes for savers and support economic growth.
The amendment was subsequently withdrawn.
Attention then turned to the LGPS, where peers from across the house raised concerns about clauses that allow the Secretary of State to direct administering authorities to participate in or withdraw from specific asset pool companies.
Critics warned that these powers risked undermining local accountability and the fiduciary duties of scheme managers, with some describing the LGPS as a ‘British success story’ that was being subjected to unnecessary central interference.
Peers also questioned how asset pooling would work in practice, particularly during transition, and whether forced consolidation could disrupt long-term investment strategies or create unintended consequences for employers and taxpayers.
Others expressed concern that new duties to co-operate with strategic authorities could place pressure on funds to prioritise local or political objectives over members’ best financial interests.
However, government whip, Lord Katz, said the direction-making powers were intended as a backstop, to be used only in exceptional circumstances, and that fiduciary responsibility would remain with scheme managers.
Katz and Sherlock argued that pooling would enhance scale, governance and capacity, enabling greater investment in productive assets, including UK infrastructure and growth projects, while still allowing funds to set their own investment strategies.
Peers also debated amendments that would explicitly allow LGPS assets to be used more to support social and affordable housing.
While there was broad agreement that housing could be a suitable long-term investment for pension funds, ministers resisted calls to specify asset classes in the bill, reiterating that investment decisions must remain for funds and pools to determine within their fiduciary duties.
Further scrutiny focused on the bill’s extensive use of delegated powers, with calls for a “super-affirmative” procedure to allow greater parliamentary oversight of future regulations.
Critics argued that the scale of regulation-making powers limited effective scrutiny, while the government defended the approach as consistent with past pensions legislation and necessary to allow flexibility and industry engagement.
These amendments were also withdrawn.
The opening day concluded with further probing amendments on asset allocation and investment vehicles, reflecting ongoing concern among peers about government influence over investment decisions and the risk of unintended market distortion.
Committee stage scrutiny of the Pension Schemes Bill is set to continue over several days, with the next debate session scheduled for 14 January.
A note from Baroness Altmann (of Tottenham)
Many of us have been consulting with her about improvements to the Pension Scheme Bill and we have this message…
“The amendments are coming up for debate tomorrow I think, we didn’t reach them yesterday. But we did debate lots of important issues on LGPS yesterday and of course some more wide ranging matters – Sharon and I had a real ‘go’ about investment trusts and the ridiculousness of excluding pension funds from using them!”
I am pleased we have a means to talk with Government through peers like Ros. The amendments that Ros wants to discuss gestated on this blog, in our Pension PlayPen debates and in the work of the many who contribute to the gestation of good pension policy in Britain this parliament.
Posted in pensions
Tagged AgeWage, Defined benefit pension plan, DWP, Employment, Government, Investment, pension, Pensions, Retirement, Ros Altmann
Leave a comment