Bowles and Altmann get Investment Trusts into the Mansion House Accord.

Posted on April 29, 2026 by henry tapper
Ros Altmann
Sharon Bowles

I have had time for Ros Altmann throughout the journey for thePension Schemes Bill, until that is she had a change of mind with regards Mandation. But heh – the two houses fudged a way through to make sure we didn’t lose precious legislation.

And there was a bonus, Ros and Sharon Bowles have finally got investment trusts to count in the Mansion House Accord and I hope that I’ll own a few in mine before I die! Here is a report on how the bold ladies got their way.

This blog was a supporter and a signatory to Ros and Sharon’s initiative. You can read the original account here 

‘Common sense prevails’ as Pensions Schemes Bill passes with investment trusts included

Following industry pressure

Michael Nelson
Michael Nelson
clock29 April 2026

Investment industry figures have welcomed the inclusion of listed investment companies (LICs) within the government’s flagship Pension Schemes Bill after the House of Lords accepted a final draft on Tuesday (28 April) evening.

The move has been described as “a sensible, pragmatic step and a real victory for common sense”, after pensions minister Torsten Bell previously suggested listed equities would be excluded as they “do not invest new money”.

One in five UK adults have never heard of investment trusts amid ‘confidence gap’

Campaign groups have spent the last two months pressuring the government to include investment trusts as a ‘qualifying asset’ in the Pension Schemes Bill.

Members of the House of Lords, fund managers, CEOs and investors in UK trusts penned a letter to the minister in February, urging him to include investment trusts in the bill to encourage increased pension fund investment in the UK.

On 5 March, more than 300 prominent voices within the investment industry – including the London Stock Exchange Group, CFA UK and Association of Investment Companies CEO Richard Stone – also signed a letter to Bell in protest against the exclusion of LICs from the initial draft of the bill.

Following the passing of the bill, Stone said the changes will have an immediate impact on fulfilling pension scheme commitments under the Mansion House accord and that “common sense has prevailed”.

Liquidity a ‘limiting factor’ to wider investment trust adoption

“Investment companies are a proven structure for investing in private assets in the UK. It is common sense that investment companies should be considered a legitimate way of accessing these assets,” the CEO added.

Fidelity International’s head of investment companies Claire Dwyer welcomed the move, as did Christian Pittard, head of closed‑end funds at Aberdeen Investments, who said a framework that focuses on assets rather than structure “will make it easier for pension schemes to deploy capital more effectively and at scale”.

“Investment trusts have long played a critical role in channelling capital into long-term opportunities underpinning innovation and economic growth,” Dwyer added.

“Giving pension schemes greater scope to invest through the structure should enhance choice, support member outcomes and add further breadth to the UK’s capital markets.”

FCA urged to include single- or dominant-asset structures within closed-end investment companies

Anthony Leatham, investment companies analyst at Peel Hunt, credited House of Lords members Sharon Bowles and Ros Altmann, alongside the AIC and other industry bodies, for ensuring that the outcome reflects practical investment realities.

He explained that, while there was no guarantee of an increase in immediate demand, bringing investment companies into scope was “strategically important”, providing incremental support for the sector and helping to narrow discounts over time.

“In a market where semi liquid vehicles are increasingly promoted as access points to private markets, this development also reinforces the case for the closed-ended structure as the most appropriate way to offer daily liquidity against inherently illiquid underlying assets,” Leatham said.

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Real or Fixed income in retirement? Will the dashboard show, “value for money” over time?

Posted on April 29, 2026 by henry tapper

Following my blog commending the two houses for getting the Pension Schemes Bill over the line, I got this comment from Richard Smith

We have to do something to ensure we have one standard for regular income and to my mind a pension has to be “real”, keeping up with inflation. DB pensions often are linked to inflation (nowadays CPI) but how many of them are linked to the full inflation? A high proportion of private DB pensions are capped at 5% or 2.5% while the pre-97 pensions are paid level (in effect losing value each year, whatever the inflation).

The Pensions Dashboard is going to normalise the income that it projects in line with SMPI and as Richard says, that means an Estimated Retirement Income that starts high and reduces to nugatory amounts over 30 years.

I think we can all agree that a Fixed income (one that doesn’t go up each year) does not provider the value for money that’s provide by one that does – a Real income.

We reckon that there is 50% of the value of a fully index linked pension tied up in the promise of inflation protection. Real pensions that pay dependent’s pensions offer value for money over time , even if they are relatively low year one.

We have just had the Pension Schemes Bill reform DC so it provides as a default, retirement income for the pensioner. Now we need to know the detail of the retirement income offered. Will it be Real income, increasing with inflation with dependent’s pensions or will it pay a Fixed level income with no protection to spouses or partners?

There is a huge debate coming up between those who feel that paying an income that decreases each year is adequate, while others see the need for people’s retirement to stay real (protected against inflation in full).

The “real” reform will be when pensions on the dashboard show the regular income that a DC pot defaults to and if that income is not “real” , then we can hardly call this a “real reform” – can we!

Value for money in your retirement isn’t just the first year income, it is the income you get every year until you die and if you have one , your significant others get if we die before them.

Since it is possible to capitalise the value of a lifetime income , it is possible to estimate the value we are being promised by our promised CDC pension. It should also be possible to value the income offered by the default of a DC pot.

If value for money is about the value that sits behind the money purchase from pot to pension, then a decumulation VFM should not be that hard. If we are to have regular income paid as an annuity from day one, then its the value of the annuity, if the annuity comes at a later stage (the Nest default will pay out from 85) then it is going to be more complicated – but little different from CDC (as Nest will be targeting CPI). We know that the intention of those behind USS (not a DC but a DB scheme) is to move to a CDC approach paying increases on the pension in line with what can be afforded by investment gains – this is CDC by the back door.

But what can be compared by all forms of inflation (including the capped inflation payments of most private DB pensions, is the value for money of the decumulaiton.

If we are serious about VFM and pensions then the vital step for VFM to take is to tell people whether the retirement income that they see represents value for money (or not).

We think the situation matters to people not  just in year one but 30 years down the line. Future income should be considered when VFM is worked out. If people are taking decisions about  retirement income , they need to understand the situation throughout the rest of their life. That’s what VFM must assess.

 

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Hymans Robertson sets the standard for pension conferences

Posted on April 29, 2026 by henry tapper

Yesterday’s pension conference was something of a triumph. The agenda is here

I have a few highlights that include Hayley James speaking on our behaviour  and David Walker and Ben Fox on investment can make us resilient when times are hard.

They have found a new place for pension folk to meet and their hall was packed to the rafters (where I was – they called it the balcony but that was full too!)

Sadly I missed a few sessions as I was being pulled by Pension PlayPen in the morning and Prospect in the afternoon. But that didn’t stop me attending the breakout session after lunch which pitted Simon True of superfund  Clara with Louise Lindsay DB scheme SAUK and Lisa Leas of Hymans.

Last but not least was Adrian Boulding talking as a potential  proprietor of a workplace CDC.

I’m not just saying this because I was invited, I’m saying so because I found every minute enervating. Please can we have pension conferences in London  as good as this!

Dr Hayley James leads out in the morning

In my view, these women were anything but poor men!

 

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The news this morning is good – the Bill’s done – let’s hope we now get DC pensions!

Posted on April 29, 2026 by henry tapper

We had been assured by Bryn Davies that it would happen but when it did , it was a relief. Steve Webb (who knows his way around getting pension bills enacted) brought it to my attention last night.

We have Royal Assent to come later  in the Kings Speech. It will announce we have new legislation that will make a difference. That difference will be meaningful to you and me.

Phil Brown is right as his piece in Professional Pensions makes clear.

We will remember the impact of this Bill and what followed, not what has happened over Mandation.  That  will be sidelined as it should have been. It never was what this Bill set out to do and now has done!

This is what Phil Brown says

The Bill is intentionally enabling. Its ambition on scale, consolidation, value for money and retirement outcomes depends on regulations still to be written and implemented. For schemes, providers and advisers, the challenge will be keeping pace with what follows.

The timetable for delivery of the DC and DB measures in the Bill , stretch into the next decade and many will not be fully implemented during this parliament.

There are many opportunities for the main thrust of the bill to fall victim to lobbying. Thank fully we have an alternative in workplace CDC pension which cannot be wrecked, for they have  secondary legislation completed (thanks to the DWP).

Another stream of legislation  for CDC

There is a separate timetable for CDC , Royal Mail’s version is complete, the multi-employer workplace pension (to match DC master trusts) will have its code in place by the end of July while we are promised legislation to consider for retirement CDC by the end of this year.

CDC is already here for employers to consider as an upgrade to the DC master trust and to the ordinary people I was talking to yesterday afternoon it could not come quick enough.

As the Pension PlayPen discussed yesterday morning, the biggest changes to the delivery of workplace pensions are happening outside the perimeter of the Pension Schemes Bill.  Action from employers will start way before the completion of the secondary legislation on DC has been completed. The option to convert a DC pot to CDC pension at retirement will not be available till later still!

But let’s see the bigger picture; we are moving forward with DC and DB as promised !

The two streams aren’t quite in sequence, but let that be. The priorities that Pensions UK have are laid out by Phil Brown below

The first wave is expected to focus on defined contribution (DC) scale and consolidation. Regulations will need to define what counts towards the £25bn ‘main scale default arrangement’ and how connected defaults can be aggregated. Parallel Financial Conduct Authority rule‑making for contract‑based schemes adds complexity for providers operating across both regimes.

Alongside this, the government is expected to consult on regulations underpinning the new Value for Money (VfM) framework for trust‑based DC schemes. The key issue is not the metrics but the consequences of underperformance: how assessments are scored and published, and how and when The Pensions Regulator (TPR) can intervene, including forcing consolidation or closure.

Further consultations will follow on contractual override, small pots consolidation, defined benefit (DB) surplus extraction, a permanent statutory framework for DB superfunds, and new duties around DC decumulation and guided retirement. Collectively, this is one of the most intensive periods of pension reform in decades.

Getting the order wrong could blunt the intended impact of the reform package. Reforms should be phased so that the foundations come first: clarify the end‑state for the VfM framework (including the consequences of underperformance) and the definition of scale, then allow schemes and providers time to respond through orderly consolidation and investment strategy changes.

Only once scale and VfM are bedded in should the system move at pace on reforms that are operationally complex or heavily member‑facing, such as small pots consolidation and the new decumulation and guided retirement duties.

Finally, measures affecting DB schemes – including a permanent superfund regime and any changes to surplus extraction – should follow with appropriate safeguards, informed by the market and regulatory capacity that will be built through earlier stages.

All this is of massive consequence to the pensions industry but not necessarily in this order. I suspect that the most important to ordinary people will be the new decumulation and guided retirement duties. These appear to be less important than issues to do with scale and VFM which have little consequence to those wanting pensions!

Nausicaa Delfas said of DC that it was “unfinished” and it would be good to see decumulation becoming part of what DC does! Right now, it is a promise of a pension that is not being met by the pensions industry.

We will have, during the move towards “guided retirement“, a pensions dashboard indicating the kind of income that people will get if they do nothing but there are huge differences between the level annuity at retirement that the dashboard will convert the pot to and the vision for a default retirement income that I hear talked about by DC providers.

It should be remembered that one of the most contentious discussions over pensions is the level of increases in the State Pension! We are a long way from where we will end up with pensions from DC pots!

I hope that Torsten doesn’t let “financial services” kick DC pensions into the long grass. Ordinary people want their savings to  pay real income for the rest of their lives. The savings industry may still wreck this idea ; Government must be watch full!

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CDC; should we stay or should we go? The video and slides!

Posted on April 29, 2026 by henry tapper

It was a great turn out which included a TPR actuary,  DWP’s top CDC man and a former CEO of  the PPF. Adrian Boulding was on the all, on his way to speak at an event where I was broadcasting from. He was great  and so was the rest of the crew we had  at the Pension PlayPen!

This was the question I had recently been asked .

“if CDC provides a better pension than DC, why wait till retirement to start buying a CDC pension?”

Of course there are plenty of providers who agree that CDC is worth buying into at retirement and they’ll be waiting to offer it till legislation and regulation is in place.

Here are the ten slides we’ll be talking to this morning,  can watch us on a video and keep the slides which you can download here

What do you think? Join us for our Pension PlayPen session tomorrow (Tuesday 28th April 2026!)

 

This is your INVITATION to a Pension PlayPen Coffee Morning

–  CPD is included

It’s Online – it’s on Teams and it’s today on Tuesday 28th April 2026 at 10.30 

 

Henry Tapper
Chris Bunford

What do the boys believe?

Henry Tapper and Chris Bunford established the Pensions Mutual to offer a workplace pension for employers who want to offer CDC pensions to their staff.

They aren’t interested in arguing about Retirement CDC,  annuities , flex and fix or drawdown. To the boys, these are just variations on the mess we are leaving people who’ve been in workplace savings plans.

Henry and Chris think that CDC is superior to saving into DC pots.  They reckon that building a pension is better than filling a pot.

The employers and unions they talk to agree;   if you have conviction that CDC is a better way to pay people pensions, you should switch to it as soon as it’s available

The boys hope that that will be early next year.

 

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Ten slides that will tell you if you should stay or go for CDC!

Posted on April 28, 2026 by henry tapper

Almost every conversation we have with employers is not whether CDC is better for their staff than what they’ve got (DC). No – it’s whether to stick with DC till someone retires or go with CDC as the workplace pension.

Chris Bunford, who’s Pensions Mutual’s chief actuary is clear in his mind, member’s get better pensions from a lifetime in CDC than in DC.

I put it another way,

“if CDC provides a better pension than DC, why wait till retirement to start buying a CDC pension?”

Of course there are plenty of providers who agree that CDC is worth buying into at retirement and they’ll be waiting to offer it till legislation and regulation is in place.

Here are the ten slides we’ll be talking to this morning, if you can’t make it, you can watch us on a video but being there is so much fun!

What do you think? Join us for our Pension PlayPen session tomorrow (Tuesday 28th April 2026!)

 

This is your INVITATION to a Pension PlayPen Coffee Morning

–  CPD is included

It’s Online – it’s on Teams and it’s today on Tuesday 28th April 2026 at 10.30 

 

Henry Tapper
Chris Bunford

What do the boys believe?

Henry Tapper and Chris Bunford established the Pensions Mutual to offer a workplace pension for employers who want to offer CDC pensions to their staff.

They aren’t interested in arguing about Retirement CDC,  annuities , flex and fix or drawdown. To the boys, these are just variations on the mess we are leaving people who’ve been in workplace savings plans.

Henry and Chris think that CDC is superior to saving into DC pots.  They reckon that building a pension is better than filling a pot.

The employers and unions they talk to agree;   if you have conviction that CDC is a better way to pay people pensions, you should switch to it as soon as it’s available

The boys hope that that will be early next year.

What’s this session going to discuss?

The session will focus on the differences between a multi-employer workplace CDC pension and a retirement CDC

It will look at who’s involved in this discussion . And it explains  the advantages of each version of CDC to different parts of the pension market. More importantly , Henry and Chris will look at how ordinary people will benefit from each variant and what (if any) are the advantages of CDC over a workplace DC savings plan and drawdown or a retirement pot!

As TPR moves toward publishing its CDC code, potential proprietors of workplace CDC schemes see a clear market division. There are employers who want to upgrade their workplace pension now.  There are others preferring  to wait and see the additional choice available from a DC plan from the end of the decade.

Do I need to register? 

Of course you don’t- this is a Pension PlayPen Coffee Morning!

Please paste this URL into your diary

https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/363312577277089?p=mRTbYV8BJpPUoo2cog

Or you can simply click HERE today.

If you are interested in these major changes to how defined contributions can be converted into pensions, this hour long discussion is for you.

Regards,
Pension Playpen

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Derek Scott calls the state of reform from the Pension Schemes Bill

Posted on April 28, 2026 by henry tapper

 

Some people do it for you whatever their age. Follow Bob Dylan , follow Derek Scott! Both call the state of things.

So why do you want to read my blogs when you can read the fantastic Derek Scott rounding up the pension schemes bill. I don’t know if he writes with AI at his fingertips but I am quoting here his response to my blog Being poor in retirement is down to your behaviour – L&G can cure you. I’m not quite sure what the link is to his wonderful piece but I don’t care, there is so much in his post to like, I wish I had one more than one like at my disposal!

Derek Scott calls the state of reform from the Pension Schemes Bill (Derek’s words from his recent comment)

I listen and hear parts where the marketing gloss creeps in
• “Value for money” framing
• Sounds substantive, but still ill-defined in practice, after all
this time.

In reality, a regulatory captured mechanism to:
• push consolidation,
• weed out some poor schemes,
• justify higher-fee strategies? (e.g. private markets).

It does not guarantee better net outcomes for members.

Private markets/illiquids in DC defaults
• This is a big “industry” push—and the most questionable.

Claims:
• higher returns,
• better diversification,
• “DB-like” investing.

Issues:
• higher fees and complexity,
• valuation opacity,
• unclear net-of-fee returns at scale,
• governance burden shifted onto members who don’t choose this.

There’s no strong evidence yet that these investments will materially improve retirement outcomes for typical DC savers.

“We’re more innovative than other countries” is spin.

The UK is actually catching up on decumulation design; Australia and the US and others are ahead in different ways.

A UK “default retirement solution” could be useful—but it’s not inherently superior.

The 50% reduction in “shortfalls”
is the most marketing-heavy claim.

Likely driven by:
• modelling assumptions,
• selective cohorts (engaged users, 20% or less),
• behavioural prompts like “increase contributions slightly.”

It certainly doesn’t mean people are now on track for adequate retirement incomes in any absolute sense.

What’s missing (and matters most), the critical gap: none of this addresses the core structural problem of DC.

Contribution rates remain too low
• Auto-enrolment at ~8% total or less is insufficient.
• No amount of dashboards, apps, or private assets fixes under-investing.
• Investment risk, sequencing risk, longevity risk are still on the individual.

DB pooled and absorbed these risks; DC has always individualised them.

Outcomes remain highly unequal
• Broken work histories, low earnings, gig work → fragmented, small pots.
• The people who most need help are least likely to engage with apps or guidance journeys.
• No real risk pooling (yet)?
• CDC is mentioned, but still sounds niche and politically constrained.
• Without pooling, DC cannot replicate DB-like income stability.

Final thoughts
• Yes, these developments may marginally improve DC outcomes:
• slightly lower costs,
• slightly better investment design,
• fewer obviously bad retirement decisions.

But they do not fundamentally change the equation: Most DC “savers” will end up with smaller, more uncertain incomes than their DB predecessor “pensioners”.

Addendum on CDC from the Pension Plowman

I should add to Derek’s comment that the CDC legislation that allowed Royal Mail and now allows multi-employer CDC schemes, does not fall within the Pension Schemes Bill.

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The Lord of Brixton and Mr Stakeholder sandwich this blog with sanity!

Posted on April 28, 2026 by henry tapper

This has got a lot of people like me , getting pretty stressed out, but luckily this blog has got the likes of the Lord of Brixton , Bryn Davies, I really was grateful to him  keeping us in the loop and hopeful of a Bill turning to an Act.

 

Proposed government powers to mandate pension scheme investment have again been defeated in the House of Lords, as the impasse between the peers and the Labour majority in the Commons drags on.

On the evening of 22 April, the government lost a key vote on mandation in the House of Lords by 234 votes to 152, a defeat by 82 votes.

There remains a possibility that the whole Bill could fail to pass, if the Commons and Lords have not agreed on a final version before the end of the Parliamentary session next week (1 May).

Aside from mandation, the bill includes a range of other measures which have seen less opposition, such as consolidation of small pension pots, and rule changes which would allow the Pension Protection Fund to reinstate a levy if it needed to do so.

Steve Webb, pensions secretary from 2010-2015 and now a consultant at Lane Clark & Peacock, says: “Ministers should recognise that there is a reason for the continued and cross-party opposition to their plans, which is that mandation is a fundamentally flawed policy.

A number of large DB and DC schemes have previously made voluntary commitments to invest a set percentage of their portfolio into domestic private assets through the Mansion House Compact and the Mansion House Accord.

Following previous debate in the Lords, the Labour government had amended the mandation clause of the Pension Schemes Bill to more closely align it to the Accord.

Current pensions secretary Torsten Bell has previously defended mandation, arguing that previous fixations on cost in the pensions sector had reduced investments in private markets in spite of the possibility for higher returns.

In the current wording of the amendment, the Pension Schemes Bill makes clear that no more than ten per cent of a portfolio can be mandated within such “qualifying assets” such as private credit and private equity.

Ros Altmann, a member of the House of Lords and another former pensions secretary, says: “There are needless dangers for members in the Government’s current insistence on mandation by 2030. The Lords have united against the present wording for good reasons and we would like to work with the Government to achieve better outcomes for members and the economy.”

Will Hutton

Reading all that was rubbish!  But I’ll finish for the second time with Mr Stakeholder (Will Hutton). What with Bryn Davies, I have a sandwich of sanity from old heroes from the left wing of economics and actuarial sense!

Most people under 45 are not members of a pension fund that averages the good and bad luck of varying life expectancies and is large enough to invest across the gamut of great opportunities with their attendant risk to achieve good returns for pensioners. All is made worse by a derisory contribution rate matched by even more derisory contributions from employers, members ascribed their own little pension pot when they retire. Essentially, they face the ups and downs of investment and longevity risk by themselves. Employers, industry lobbyists and right-of-centre politicians plead it is trustees’ fiduciary obligation not to change anything – in effect, washing their hands of responsibility for a dysfunctional structure and indifferent returns. Millennials and zoomers don’t expect to be as well off as their parents; they are right.

Yet the attempt by the government to go some way to remedy the position in its proposed pensions bill is deadlocked in the House of Lords, a bone of contention being the government assuming a time-limited reserve power to mandate industry promises to invest – as Australian, Canadian, American and Dutch pension funds do – in promising homegrown private British companies.

Good for pensioners; good for the economy. As the pensions minister, Torsten Bell, explained last week, the industry makes promises and doesn’t act on them. With these already watered-down new powers, it just may. Yet to try to haul the pensions industry into the same investment universe that other capitalist countries and pensioners occupy is to be accused of statist Stalinism.

Will Hutton
Bryn Davies
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I’m not so worried about US insurers as the pensioners who depend on their annuities

Posted on April 28, 2026 by henry tapper

Toby Nangle is our top analyst working on American bonds , whether the credit is public or private of something in the middle. We should worry if there’s a problem with American insurers owning this stuff.  Insurers  using it to back up annuities for people in the UK, most importantly people who were in pensions and are now being paid in their older ages by insurers. Insurers who are backed by American insurers owned by private equity who see an opportunity to hustle an opportunity to make money out of backing up annuities with this private and semi private credit that Toby Nangle is worried about.

Toby does not go so far as express his concern, he has done his job by explaining how it is that American insurers are flirting with problems and may be in trouble without having to say so.

Infact , he finishes his brilliant article , passing the task of analysing whether there is an impact on British insurers owned by Americans to the Bank of England who are due to report on this next year

Toby concludes

it would be fascinating to get a handle on what spillovers these kinds of stresses might have on the rest of insurers’ balance sheets. For that we’ll maybe have to wait for the results of the Bank of England’s private markets system-wide stress exercise in 2027.

There are analysts of bonds who read my blogs, Con Keating among them , for whom the work of Nangle will be of interest and as most readers will not have got this far, I will use a sharing link up so that if they press this link, they can see not just this story but a list of others they can request free shares from me (henry@agewage.com) . Here is a taster of the amount of work being done on American insurers (the links are not live) but can be requested from me (reasonably)

I am not an analyst and though I can follow the brilliant Toby Nangle, it is only so far. His head is so much more clear on this stuff than mine will be. But my feeling is that Nangle is not comfortable, his style is one that will be understood by those who like him are involved in analysing these markets

Upsum: big meh, at least from an insurer rating perspective. And the meh stays big for almost every insurer even after chucking the kitchen sink and maybe the bathtub too at their private credit holdings, narrowly defined.

About that narrowness

If you’re a private credit bear you’re probably thinking that the issue could one of definitions, not of methodology.

But S&P’s super-narrow taxonomy of private credit isn’t dumb or unthinking. There’s a lot of concern that is quite specific to both middle-market borrowers, and the opacity of insurers’ exposure.

Taking a more expansive view of private credit that captures more than a third of US life insurer balance sheets — and then extrapolating concerns about private credit that are mostly specific to middle-market borrowers — would produce a distorted, perhaps catastrophising, analysis.

So we can understand why S&P’s stress scenarios are so laser-focused. However, Alphaville can see some issues with its approach.

While it’s great to shine a flashlight on the darkest corners of insurers’ bondholding, any actual middle-market CLO tranches held that happen to carry public ratings are excluded from the stress tests, as is every other tradeable or publicly-rated credit instrument. Which feels weird.

My interpretation of this is that it would be wrong to call insurers “in trouble” but there’s a chance the problem that they have is greater than even the S&P’s reports can detect.

My worry is that by the time that the troubles of some US insurers is fully apparent, things may be too bad to put right and people will find themselves not getting their pension paid.

 

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OMG. Social Media is influential but not always helpful

Posted on April 27, 2026 by henry tapper

Someone in the wonderland of pensions has woken up to reality that social media in an influencer and that people’s behaviour might be influenced by every bit of social media from tic-toc to linked in (including Twitter (X) , Bluesky and Facebook. Oh and a few others on this phone screen..

What pensions needs to wake up to is that while it is easy to be influential to retail purchasers, it is not so easy to stay within what we now all call “guard rails”.

So on the same day as Professional Pensions is publishing some not so happy news from XPS

If savers at this stage of their working lives do engage with their pension, it is likely to amount to little more than a periodic glance at how much they have saved. A survey of industry professionals conducted by XPS Group last year found that 37% of respondents said minimal member engagement was the biggest obstacle to implementing a default retirement solution.

We remind ourselves that we use social media for everything else than boring ourselves with non-news from our pensions.

On the other hand, while members are unlikely to check their pensions regularly, they are almost certainly likely to check their social media feeds daily. It would be something of an understatement to say that social media has become ubiquitous in the modern world, serving multiple purposes, from staying in touch with friends and sharing significant updates about their lives to keeping up to date with news and current affairs.

So why not turn over our pensions to the finfluencers?

Well here is a good reason.

While Martin Lewis, Iona Bain , Tom McPhail and Steve Webb are well known not just on the TV but on our phones, so are a whole lot of not so savoury characters.

This from Muna Abi on the same day as Martin Richmond’s summoning of us to social media!

The Financial Conduct Authority has targeted illegal finfluencers in a coordinated international enforcement week aimed at protecting consumers from harmful financial promotions.

Around 17 regulators worldwide took part in the “week of action”, which combined enforcement activity, consumer awareness campaigns and educational programmes for finfluencers seeking to operate within the rules.

Meanwhile, the FCA secured a guilty plea from Geordie Shore’s Aaron Chalmers for illegal social media promotions and has launched criminal proceedings against two other individuals for similar offences.

It also issued four targeted warning letters to individuals suspected of unauthorised financial promotions, alongside 34 warning alerts against firms or individuals and 14 updates to existing warnings.

OMG Social Media is influential but not always helpful. Pensions are boring , work is boring and the two go well together.

What we need is a simple way to work out what our “deferred pay” and that can be done through the boring things we talk to HR and Finance at our employers.

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