There has been a lot of discussion this week about whether we should stop the young from watching things on social media. I wonder if the readers of this blog are not prone to spending too much of their time reading a finfluencer. In general, are you reading watching and listening to your  colleagues and “wannabe colleagues” on social media?

You are reading this blog and the next item is the blog of Darren and Nico, it could be argued that you are spending too much time on your phone or laptop (or desktop or tablet),

This blog publishes to Linkedin ,X  (twitter) , Facebook and BlueSky. I have those I respect who go nowhere near them all and there is particular reservation about X (Steve Webb nearly influenced me off it).

It is clear that young people are more vulnerable to social media as it has been used A Newscast  program, available on BBC’s social media channel explores the subject

Today, its presenters hear from Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly took her own life in 2017.

An inquest found social media content contributed “more than minimally” to Molly’s death. Since then Ian has campaigned for greater safety online. So why is Ian opposed to a ban for under 16s?

Laura and Paddy (the hosts of this podcast) discuss the arguments for and against, and why there seems to be increasing support for the idea in British politics. They also look at what’s happened in Australia, which introduced a ban last year. introduced a ban, Kemi Badenoch has come out to say that if she were in government the Conservative party would follow suit.

Since then, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said “all options are on the table”  with regards the restriction of the use of social media, both by those who put stuff on and those who imbibe.

Like most people, there are places on social media I will not go and I haven’t followed Steve Webb, mainly because I think that if we go on losing voices like mine, then X becomes the place for a certain type of voice that should be balanced. I no longer get into arguments on twitter and I suspect that the arguments are now anything but liberal (in any sense of that word).

As far as children go, I do not have immediate concern. I am aware that there is no longer “watch with mother”, a program I grew up with 60 years ago. Instead there is a lot of watch without mother because kids are smarter than parents and given access to the web will find a way. Do I see a way of stopping children getting on the web – restricting but not stopping the web’s use, is my best answer.

And you – you are still reading if you’ve got this far and you almost certainly are not young. Social media is replacing for you news papers, terrestrial TV and perhaps those social events that you grew up. Today is a Sunday, will you go to a church, will you go out to lunch , go to a sporting event? Or will you do a web-version? Has the social media you used replaced social events?

I suspect the biggest casualty in terms of revenues is television, the time we spent on TV is now partially spent on social media. Time spent on radio and reading papers is not generating the advertising revenue it did, instead money that is being made comes from the influence that social media has.

Last week, someone who is evidently rather better at many aspects of pensions than me, referred to my skills as a “finfluencer“, which is a word that I have just added to my online dictionary! Am I offering you a safer place to spend your time, is Nico or Darren or were the social media specialists on BBC? Are we redefining our boundaries so we live a safer way or are we throwing our portals (eyes and ears) open to pernicious ideas and views?

I am pretty sure that none of those mentioned above are generating income directly.

Am I really a finfluencer and has that word become useable of me because I learned it and used it on this blog? Is this Government’s financial influence responsible?

We have to think about the responsibility of our statements – we all do – even the DWP.

Ian Russell lost his daughter but uses social media to explain its dark side. His way of speaking on the subject shows that it can do good as well as bad.He is an influencer on influence.

It seems harder in these days of long darkness and good reasons not to go outside, to avoid the web. I should say “thank you” for reading me this far (people do) but I’m not sure that you hang on my words by way of influence. I hope you take a step back and wonder if spending time reading me isn’t time not spent reading , listening to or watching something better. But more challengingly, I hope that you consider the time you spend in direct conversation with those you love , including possibly your God, superior to this conversation.

Have a fulfilling Sunday (or whenever you get to read this blog). The original blog about VFM #142 can be found here. It uses the same images as this one, but in an attempt to finfluence you to my point of view!

I enjoyed Kirby Rappell’s explanation of how his firm -” SuperRatings”-  has succeeded in Australia providing consumers with value for money ratings on their “pensions”.

You can hear him talking to Nico and Darren here on  the latest podcast (#142)

If we are in the learning game from Australia, we should start with the biggest learning from the rating of Supers. The lesson is that the value offered by DC workplace pensions does not matter to employers in Australia  though it does matter very much to their employees.

This lesson has not been learned in the UK when our Value For Money assessments will be targeted at employers and not at those who will get paid pensions from the DC pots.

There is no evidence , even where failure is obvious,  that employers turn their back on pension providers either from the publication of absolute or risk adjusted returns.

This is a page ripped out of a report at random. Did it mean anything to savers in  2021 , does it mean anything 5 years later? Did it really change who saved into what by employers?

Employers buy on costs not performance.

The only factor that has bothered employers is the amount their employees have been paying to save and this has been influenced by cost tables (not net performance tables) drawn up by consultants.

The performance numbers become important to consumers when  individuals are given ratings that tell them the amount of pot (and in the future pension) they earn per pound invested by their provider.

Individuals might buy on performance if they got their returns. I am not sure that this discussion tells us very much about what people think that workplace pensions are for , fourteen years on from the outset of auto-enrolment. In Australia, “Supers” are intently compared and individuals decide who will carry their savings using “stapling”.

People will be expecting their pots to pay pensions. In the UK we will be expecting workplace pensions to appear on the pension dashboard and appear they will as pensions.

So with employers showing no interest in anything other than charges and individuals having no idea what they’ve got from their workplace savings other than a pot, it is difficult to see VFM as anything other than a regulatory test. Just what the FCA and TPR will do with the information that they get from VFM returns is unclear.

Where there is a lot of difference between Australia and the UK is that in Australia data is paid for by Supers (master trusts) and in the UK, despite the pound for pound  initiative, there is no use of VFM to improve member outcomes – yet.

There is no obvious reason for the VFM consultation other than to tie the actuaries up for 220 pages in discussion on how best to come up to umbers people aren’t very interested in. But the latest VFM consultation does get one actuarial very excited and I can see that there will be a lot of arm wrestling to come.

We do need to get people a lot more informed about what is happening with their savings but what matters is more than the commutation to tax-free cash. What people need to feel good about is mostly  how their and their employer contributions are converting into pensions and what expectation they can have that those pensions keep pace with inflation.

The Australian experience of VFM as explained by Kirby Rappell has nothing to do with this and is very much about performance measurement. The UK experience of pension VFM may be quite different.

If we are to think of pension saving in the terms that pension dashboard will present outcomes,  then this statement rather blows the VFM estimates out of the water.

Can we do performance measurement very well – anyway!

There is no doubt that many workplace pension providers cannot do performance measurement. AgeWage has been trying to get data for individual savers and we have taken over 10m records through our system.

We have got a composite benchmark return that can be compared to see whether value has been achieved. But most pension schemes we have approached to do measurement have been either unwilling or unable to provide us with information so that we can share it with IGCs , trustees and employers.

When members have been given information on how they have done with each provider they use, they have been able to make comparisons and some have taken decisions to focus on providers who have given them value and take money away from providers that haven’t.

But we have had to withdraw this service because . valuable as it is considered by savers, it required us to be authorised as the scores people got were considered as advice. So long as this is the case, I cannot see how comparisons , of the kind the FCA are proposing, can be distributed to consumers and – since the employers are showing no interest – I suspect that we are requiring all this too late.

We do have a chance to do better on VFM . That is by measuring the progress of contributions to pensions which is what CDC pensions require. I fear that DC saving is too far gone for the proposal the 200 page VFM consultation puts forward.