Sadly – many nurses can’t afford their “gold-plated” pensions.

Posted on December 19, 2025 by henry tapper

This article was originally published in 2022 and I thought at a time when many of us will see nurses, we need to consider their predicaments with pensions. Recently, Jeremy Hunt has argued that public pensions aren’t affordable, I don’t think that’s right but I think we need to consider a cheaper alternative for those who struggle. Perhaps the new CDC pension could work – maybe with a lower cost for those who find the NHS pension just too gold-plated for their budget.

Strikes are a feature of NHS life these days, we need to think about the part pensions play in NHS reward

“The Government can get people back to work – and also reduce taxpayer costs – by allowing all public sector workers to choose higher pay today, in exchange for a lower DB pension in retirement” – John Ralfe

This is not a daft idea, it deserves attention and in the absence of better, will get it.

The NHS Pension Scheme employer contribution rate increased on 1 April 2019 from 14.3% to 20.6%, ( plus the employer levy of 0.08%).

If a nurse could “flex” pension for pay, employers could afford to pay more salary (but remember salary requires employers to pay National Insurance while pension contributions don’t- so it’s not quite one for one).

So if you agree with the Government that nurses aren’t fundamentally underpaid, then a pension flex makes sense.

If your view is that NHS pensions aren’t “gold-plated” but a way to allow people to retire in dignity with retirement, you will baulk at the opportunity to flex.

If you are a nurse, you pay a sliding scale of pension contributions, reducing as a percentage of your pay the less you earn

Footnote.

For nurses who earn under the lower earning limit for income tax, there is no tax incentive (though this will change in 2025 so that all nurses get either the tax relief or the equivalent tax-incentive). So giving up pension might also mean more take home.

Once employee contributions reduce below 4% (of band earnings) , members are no longer auto-enrolled , this is a further complication.

A pension scheme many nurses can’t afford.

It is right that people understand the total pay (reward) is the amount to compare nurses NHS pay (compared with private sector pay).

But this dispute is not about nurses leaving to the private sector, it is about how we value nurses.

“Gold Plated” is not the lifestyle I see among retired nurses I know . It would be interesting to know what the average retirement income of a former NHS nurse is today but certainly nurses should be a lot better off for being in the pension scheme.

If you’d been listening to radio 5 this morning at 2.25  you could have heard a 78 year old widower explaining he would not see his 64 year old son who recently died – cremated. He did not have any means to pay for a cremation ceremony. There are costs for not being in a pension.

All NHS employees enjoy a CARE scheme, which entitles them to 1/54th of each year’s earnings, which means that taken together with state pension (some of which is paid out of the NHS scheme) nurses could retire on an equivalent standard of living as a pensioner to when they were at work.

But figures from the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) show that between April and July this year, 66,167 NHS staff in England and Wales opted out of their NHS pensions, more than double the 30,270 who removed themselves from the pension scheme during the same period last year.

The Nursing Times reports that  4,378 registered nurses stopped paying into their NHS pensions between April and July this year and, in total, 11,937 nurses have opted out since April last year.

The sad truth is that for many nurses , the NHS pension is just too expensive. gold-plated or not.

According to Nursing Times, a newly qualified nurse in England and Wales on a salary of around £27,000 would pay around £183 of their basic salary into their pension each month.

Using the Minimum Income Standard (MIS), which is used to calculate the UK real living wage, the New Economics Foundation found in October  that the income of a single newly-registered Band 5 nurse with two children, would be between £1,450 and £1,750 below the MIS

This looks like a design issue supporting the argument of a pension flex. Many nurses already qualified for the pay-rise suggested but for all the wrong reasons.

Has the argument been made that the NHS pension scheme is already a lot less expensive for so many staff leaving it?

Unfortunately, I suspect that the deferred windfall to the tax-payer resulting from these opt-outs will not count for much at the Treasury which is looking at immediate costs. The pension costs from retiring nurses are unlikely to be counted in HMT calculations.

And this may be why putting pensions on the bargaining counter , hasn’t happened yet.

 

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“Preparing for an ageing Society” – the Lords speak out.

Posted on December 19, 2025 by henry tapper

Henry Tapper – wrinkly

The wrinklies must pull their weight – we must be a tolerant society, a mixed economy.

This is a report on a House of Lords report but is inspired by an article in the digital FT published a few hours ago.

The FT has a marvellous set of charts which (if you subscribe) you can see as one chart that explodes into the many set out below as you scroll down digitally! The message is really important, in this country, people of my age (64) who think they will put their feet up are the lucky one, there will be less comfy 70, 60 or even 50 year olds taking early retirement and we’ll be more of a burden on our children if we do. Indeed, many of us will have to come out of retirement , like one or two people my age are doing (Damion).

All of the following slides are an exploding slide – digitally – but the message is one that people need to see. It is vital if we talk of intergenerational transfers that we understand that it is not the state pension that is causing all the unfairness, nor DB/DC and CDC will only do good if it is eventually a whole of life approach (but more of that in future blogs). What really matters – these charts tell us, is that healthy people keep working and being productive to a society late into sixties.

This is not the message my generation grew up with but “early retirement” was always a lie for the mass of us.

Here goes – a progress ham-fistly by me!

By 2028, (OBR and ONS data says) tax revenues will peak from those in their forties and tail away fast from the end of our fifties. Sound familiar?

People in their sixties, like me, feel we are old enough to retire, but stopping working reduces our productivity and I suspect stores up problems for later age (hence the pension schemes bill advocates by default we take a level income from a default retirement age , determined by our workplace pension (a bit of averaging there, we are not all going to default but most will).

I think you’ve guessed what the next slide will say, those aren’t very big green bars!

That’s right, the cost of educating is as nothing to the cost of welfare needed to look after those who are over 70 and the cost of welfare to the really old is massively more than any other group, spending much of the blue box tax revenues bought in by those at work

It’s precisely the impact of healthcare which is stretching the pain from those beyond their sixties to everyone over 20. That’s the cross subsidy building

Social care, the amount spent to make life decent for some who’ve lost it, increases massively as you grow old . All this leads to the final slide, a projection into the future, where my generation will be in our 8os and 90s.

We all sense there is a problem brewing but this explanation is the best I’ve ever seen and if you are up early, you can do the progressions digitally on this link.  Thanks Valentina Romei who wrote the article surrounds it.

The trigger for FT doing this was a debate this week initiated by Lord Wood in the House of Lords.

The FT’s shows manual work but that’s FT bias, the FT should consider wrinklies my age, who advertise their departure from the workplace on Linked In wherever you look!

There is more good stuff to read if you are interested. Parliament had a select committee hearing on this in the Summer and this has led to the report presented by Lord Wood

You can download the report here 

There is of course even more bad news in terms of fertility (we aren’t having the babies that we were) but the FT finishes, as I will finish, on a happy note. As a country, we are better than many. That’s because we are a tolerant mixed economy – let’s keep it that way!

I suspect that this will be very influential on the Pensions Commission.

Stewart Wood

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Steve Simkins: LGPS prudence will cost councils dear

Posted on December 19, 2025 by henry tapper

The author of this article

As council pension funds prepare to set employer contribution rates for the next three years, excessive levels of prudence could see councils paying more than they need to, writes a partner at Isio.

There has been a fundamental shift in the fortunes of UK defined benefit pension schemes like the Local Government Pension Scheme over the last three years. This is because the value of their liabilities – what they need to set aside to pay out pensions in the future – has fallen by around 50%.

This applies to both trust-based pension schemes and the LGPS in the same way, but the impact is much bigger for the LGPS.

Why have the liability value falls been so significant? It’s because of the 3.5% pa rise in the yields on long-dated gilts – UK government bonds – since 2022. Arguably, pensions are like bonds – both give rise to guaranteed payments in future years.

This means that, whether or not a scheme is actually invested in gilts, an actuarial valuation using gilt yields with no allowance for investment outperformance is a strong reference point for assessing risk and future funding needs.

Insurance companies have to price pension liabilities very cautiously to meet their regulatory requirements and to protect their pension customers over their lifetimes. They base their pricing on gilt yields. Should the LGPS be more cautious than insurers?

I would argue not.

Low-risk index

One of the most important things a pension fund needs to know is whether its assets are sufficient to pay out pensions in the future. Actuarial valuations aim to work out a pension fund’s assets and liabilities.

If a pension fund has a funding position of 100%, its assets are just enough. If it is below 100% it has a deficit; if it is above 100% it has a surplus.

And one of the most important numbers used to calculate the funding position is the discount rate, which is used to estimate the present value of a pension fund’s future liabilities. The lower the discount rate that funds and actuaries use, the harder it is to reach 100%. A lower discount rate is more prudent.

Isio’s Low-Risk Index for LGPS (England & Wales) uses gilt-yield discount rates. It shows that the LGPS’s funding position has, in aggregate, improved from around 67% at 31 March 2022 to 126% at 31 March 2025.

The low-risk future service contribution rate – the amount that an employer has to pay to cover new pension entitlements that their staff will build up in the future – has reduced from around 50% to 15% of pay.

If we use these Index numbers as a reference point for the three yearly actuarial valuation of the LGPS which took place using data as at 31 March 2025 – the outcome of which will become clearer in the coming months – what might it mean?

£6bn annual saving

The typical way to calculate an employer contribution rate in an actuarial valuation is to take the past service surplus, which our low-risk model puts at £87bn, and utilise (or “spread”) it to adjust the future service contribution rate.

If we cautiously do this over around 30 years, it gives an average LGPS employer contribution rate of around 6% of pay. This is much lower than the current average employer contribution rate of 21%.

In the context of local government funding gaps … this amount of money is very material

This would represent a £6bn saving per year for LGPS employers.

Most of the £6bn would be for the benefit of local authorities, but schools and other employers providing local services would benefit too – a neat way of meeting local investment objectives.

In the context of the current local government funding gaps and the chancellor’s spending challenges this amount of money is very material.

Based on financial economics, it makes sense to allow for outperformance of gilts if you are invested in growth assets. Government borrowing is so secure that a gilt yield discount rate represents a risk-free rate, and so you should expect an outperformance premium for taking investment risk, especially over the very long-term.

The LGPS has, since pension scheme funding principles developed significantly in the 1990s, assumed there will be out-performance. The reality is that the allowance has been adjusted to help stabilise contributions and so it has shifted across valuations. But outperformance has always been assumed.

And if you cannot stand behind a discount rate with outperformance in it, it prompts the question – what is the point of having growth assets at all?

Prudence or over-caution?

Let’s come back to our 6%, the average employer contribution rate for the LGPS assessed on a low-risk basis.

This is calculated using gilt rates and so any contribution rate above this is, in effect, assuming that the LGPS’s asset returns will fall behind gilt yields. In fact, if, as I expect, the new average contribution rate lands at around 17%, this is equivalent to using a discount rate of a full 1% below gilt yields.

This would suggest that LGPS funds are being far too prudent in their approach to setting contributions.

Some people would reject this argument.

The right question to be asking is – is the increased risk acceptable?

They would say we live in an increasingly uncertain world, so LGPS funds should increase the level of prudence to protect them against unforeseen shocks that could cut the value of their assets.

For sure, we’ve got bigger geo-political challenges than most of us can remember, and continued uncertainty around UK growth and climate change to grapple with.

And yes, this might be a time to be more cautious, but there is no need to take discount rates below gilt yields. Instead, it might be reasonable to be more cautious about outperformance of growth assets.

Sometimes the fact the LGPS is an open scheme is considered as a risk factor. On the other hand, open schemes can focus on the very-long term in a more flexible way.

It is a truism that paying lower contributions now means an increased risk of higher contributions in future. But it misses the point. The right question to be asking is – is the increased risk acceptable?

One way to address this question is to note that there has always been a risk of contributions increasing, so how does the risk of contribution increases today compare with the risk at previous valuations (no hindsight allowed!)?

The same asset-liability models that are used to inform LGPS investment strategies can be used to measure this. And, spoiler alert, the likely outcome is that even with much lower contribution rates the risk of increases is much lower than it has been before.

Stability is broken

Making employer contributions stable may have served the LGPS well in the past, but it is not going to work this time as it will move effective discount rates significantly below gilt yields for the first time.

This means there is risk that the 2025 valuation will present, with early hindsight as soon as the actuarial valuation reports are available, as the LGPS not having sufficient faith in its investment strategy to deliver the long-term performance that the investment industry and the chancellor expect and local government needs.

This is a material and relevant debate because to reflect the £6bn a year market improvements would bridge the funding gaps that nearly all councils are facing and constitute a much better use of local government resources.

Steve Simkins, partner, Isio

This article first appeared in Local Government Chronicle here on 17 December 2025

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AE’s not a tax, we need to win hearts not raid wallets.

Posted on December 19, 2025 by henry tapper

 

It is now 8 years since a Conservative Government asked for a review of AE bands by what became known as the 2017 AE review; here it is – download here  – more people saving more money – a solution that has been abandoned.

It is now past halfway in this decade. So we have missed implementing the recommendations to “maintain the momentum” by substantially increase contribution rates against wider bands of earnings from a younger age.

That was December 2017 and this is December 2025. Ruston Smith, Chris Currie and Jamie Jenkins are still about but it is not they but the Pension Commission that it’s hoped will take up the 138 pages of reports they inherit.

The door slams shut on 2025 and with it 2017 AE reforms. as Pensions minister Torsten Bell has confirmed auto-enrolment (AE) thresholds will be maintained at the current levels for 2026/27, following the statutory annual review.

This is what he has to say

Automatic enrolment has transformed workplace pension saving for millions of workers. However, despite this success, the Government recognises that millions are still undersaving for their retirement. That is why we have revived the landmark Pensions Commission to finish the job we started 20 years ago. The Commission will examine why tomorrow’s pensioners are on track to be poorer than today’s and make recommendations for change.

It is against the backdrop of the Commission’s work that I have considered and completed this year’s annual statutory review of the automatic enrolment thresholds, which are the earnings trigger and lower and upper earnings limits of the qualifying earnings band. The main focus of this year’s annual statutory review has been to ensure the continued stability of automatic enrolment for employers and individuals, particularly during the ongoing work of the Pensions Commission which will explore long term questions of adequacy and how to improve retirement outcomes, especially for those on the lowest incomes and at the greatest risk of poverty or undersaving.

The thresholds review has therefore concluded that all automatic enrolment thresholds for 2026/27 will be maintained at their 2025/26 levels.

The 2026/27 Annual Thresholds:

The automatic enrolment earnings trigger will remain at £10,000.

The lower earnings limit of the qualifying earnings band will remain at £6,240.

The upper earnings limit of the qualifying earnings band will remain at £50,270.

This is  the written statement today (18 December).

We have a view which we can consider consensual within the ABI, Pensions UK and most consultants.

This from Professional Pensions

Broadstone head of DC proposition Kelly Parsons said the decision to maintain the current AE earnings trigger and qualifying earnings band for another year is

“largely a formality and was widely expected”.

“While stability and predictability for employers and savers are welcome, freezing these thresholds highlights a deeper challenge around retirement adequacy. Ultimately, improving outcomes will require higher contributions over time, but that is not a straightforward fix. Higher rates risk pushing lower earners to opt out altogether as households juggle competing financial pressures, while increases at the lower end of earnings often deliver only modest gains to pension pots.

Fiscal drag for pension savings?

“At the same time, holding the AE thresholds steady has a quietly powerful effect, akin to fiscal drag in taxation. With the trigger remaining at £10,000 and the qualifying earnings band fixed between £6,240 and £50,270, rising wages mean more employees are brought into pension saving and contributions increase organically, even without changes to headline rates.

“However, this passive mechanism also underlines the urgent need for a broader, more deliberate approach. Improving awareness of the impact of starting late, career breaks and periods of non-saving is just as important as contribution rates, particularly for younger and lower-paid workers.

“The forthcoming work of the Pensions Commission will therefore be crucial. A credible long-term plan is needed – one that balances gradual contribution increases with clearer policy intent across the different pillars of pension provision. Without that, we risk simply storing up larger problems for future retirees and the state.”

Most small firms see AE as a tax akin to national insurance and not a means for employees to save into a pot. Most large employers set a pension contribution with regard to what their competitors are doing and not the minimum contribution rate. It is a shame that in doing nothing, Torsten Bell is framed as employing Fiscal Drag to increase saving. There has always been an assumption that contributions will go up over time as people earn more but a band of earnings, such as this caps at the bottom and the top, this to me is a reasonable holding position.

If the Pension Commission have a job, it is not to repeat the work of Curry, Smith and Jenkins in 2017, it is work out a way of convincing people that all these “taxes”, including AE are for their benefit and that they are a means of retiring somewhere close to the lifestyle they had before they retired. Giving people the option of an opt out of pensions is not enough to stop pensions being considered a tax but we need people seeing the opt-out as unnecessary. Just as Bell talks of the mandatory power to demand a growth strategy in investment. So  long as these options exist, we hope they will encourage different behaviour!

Governments , especially this one, find themselves accused of getting their way through taxation and with Bell we have a Minister abandoning a planned “tax” in increased mandatory AE contributions. Instead of a tax , we are getting improved pensions resulting from the Pensions Bill and the recently concluded work on multi-employer CDC.

My hope is that we win hearts to pension contributions. That is the challenge of the Pension Commission, they are not an annexe to HMRC.

 

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Rising youth inactivity – a million kids doing nothing? – A young IFA does something.

Posted on December 18, 2025 by henry tapper

There is something worrying pension people and it’s about young people. Today, within a few minutes I received a report of an alarming stat. on young people in the UK and a report from an IFA who is trying to connect with them on financial (pension) planning. Here are the two instances of concern.

Here is the young IFA.

Jo Cumbo sums up the mood in the pension world I work in

I had that feeling of being young between 1976 and 1984 – it was the time of economic and social depression. This was the song that was about unemployment we had.

I’m not sure we have ever had a generation that wasn’t “lost” at some time between teenage and your twenties.

My quick chat with Tom Johnson (who I suspect is rather like how I was when I was his age) went like this

It’s Christmas and there is a Crisis for many young people.  Many good people give their Christmas’ up to help youngsters (and those a little older) through dark days.

We can’t all do this, but we can all be aware that it isn’t an easy time, it never was, it isn’t going to be.

The Government doesn’t help, if it was as we wanted, we wouldn’t have anything to punch against, keep punching Tom!

 

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Blockchain to administrate- yes; crypto to pay my pension – “?”

Posted on December 18, 2025 by henry tapper

a good idea to pay pensions?

I got a message from Jo Cumbo for my comment on the use of Crypto as an investment to fund pensions yesterday. I couldn’t comment, because I don’t have the capacity to get to terms with it and because there are better things to trouble my brain about. But Jo is asking the right questions and talking to a consultancy (Cartwright) who have promoted Bitcoin to their client who has done very nice by this investment year one.

I see 50 odd responses to Jo’s question, this is a very contentious subject for investment consultants, fund managers and others cleverer than me.

My answer to Jo was for her to speak to Ian McKnight who I see has commented. He is someone who consistently talks above my pay-grade with me, as if I was half as brainy as he was and is always will be!

But the test I use for trustee investments is that trustees must be able to explain to members

  1. What the investment is in to and what difference the investment will make
  2. What good their money do in making their lives more sustainably worthwhile
  3. How much return can be expected and what the risks of that not happening are

I was taught this by Tony Filbin who is my touchstone in all this

I am afraid I am not in a position to answer the questions for Bitcoin or for any form of crypto currency. So long as I can’t I cannot support the use of it in pensions (mine or other people’s).

I can however get to grips with the use of the blockchain to manage investment administration and have been arguing on this blog the case for tokenisation. There is some cross-over between my thinking and those who manage crypto on   Distributed ledger technology (DLT).

I do not find a high return on an investment over 12 months a sufficient argument for investment, I find comprehensible answers to the questions above compelling. If no answer is forthcoming as to what justifies Bitcoin being 56% higher in value than this time this year, I will put it in the same drawer as reports that the horse which one a Grade 1 at Goodwood this year at 120-1. It is a drawer which reminds me that unexplained wins are not going to repeat with any certainty!

The ball is with Sam Roberts of Cartwright to get to my grey matter (much depleted) if I am to want investments in crypto (even Bitcoin which Iain McKnight tells me is the best of that lot).

There is of course opportunity cost in making such investments.  If no proper answers are forthcoming and you go ahead, you have to count the cost opportunity of ignoring worthwhile investments you have not made but wanted to. I know such investments exist and am prepared to share them on this blog as “good ideas” , “worth of due diligence” and “not tips” or “advice”.

 

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What’s going on with Booby and Richard and “Bec from downstairs”?

Posted on December 18, 2025 by henry tapper

First there was this..

Then there was this

It turns out there is a link on linked in to a survey of your activity during the year.

I took it. This is what it told me..

Well I assume that Linked in is monitoring “noisiness” and in my case , I am linked with three very noisy people (they may say the same of me).

Is noisiness a good thing? I guess it’s how you’re received and what it means you aren’t doing when you are messing around on your keyboard or your phone.

Expect to see a lot more of this weirdness. Having gone into the report that you get from Linked in , I promise you some insights – some you’ll enjoy, some you won’t but they are not subjective! Data  is data and in social media terms – it is your life!

Here is what you’ll get if you press on this link

https://www.linkedin.com/your-year-in-review

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Council tax increases – YES in my back yards!

Posted on December 18, 2025 by henry tapper

Let me be open, I have a place in the “City of London” and my partner has a place in Eton which is part of “Windsor and Maidenhead”. Here is the news I am waking up to!

It turns out that City of London and Windsor and Maidenhead are charging below the average for councils around the country and this is not the broad shouldered carrying the load for those up north (anywhere north).  Wandsworth, Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, City of London, Kensington and Chelsea, and Windsor and Maidenhead will be exempted from rules requiring tax rises of 5 per cent or more to be put to a local referendum.

The government said residents in the councils have had “historically very low bills”.

The exemption, which will start from 2027 and last for two years, gives local leaders “the option of bringing their bills more in line with the rest of the country”, it added. The decision came as ministers announced on Wednesday the allocation of funding to local authorities using a new formula designed to give more weight to deprivation.

Well I’m going “YES in my Back Yards” – both of them. If we have to pay more (presumably a lot more) in our back yards then it’s because of the revelation in this chart.

What this chart shows is that two rich councils (Kensington and Chelsea and Wandsworth are paying below the average in England and others not much more. Going forward, the super rich councils (which don’t all have rough areas like the above two) will be top of the council tax chargers. Westminster will be top (which has bits of rough stuff in its north), the City of London and Wandsworth will cease their long reprieve while the others will all get heavy bills to balance the books with the north.

But of course there are other ways than charging council tax and the FT list a few

Officials said the six councils singled out could fill the gap in ways other than raising council tax, for example by increasing parking charges or dipping into reserves.

Hum – and pensions?  I’m not saying that surpluses in LGPS funds that have massive surpluses such as Kensington and Chelsea, should or could be raided. But the aforementioned Chelsea is currently on pension holiday and could continue that – with others joining, to keep the council tax increase down.

I say keeping increase down, the Government’s assumption that goes into the chart is that all councils will put up council tax by the maximum allowable (5%) before going to referendum to agree an increase. So watch out rich boys down south – 5% in 2027 is your starting point for increases.

So who are the likely winners, it’s the boys up north but north includes north London (Enfield) and Luton and even if you’re north of the river (Newham). These along with Manchester is singled out by the FT as beneficiaries per capita resident of the redistribution of wealth announced on Wednesday?

North is a rather loose descriptor!

My conclusion is that the current distribution of council tax and grants to local authorities is quite beyond the comprehension of us council tax payers. The FT gives the last word to a conservative spokesperson.

Sir James Cleverly, the shadow local government secretary, accused ministers of a “nakedly political power grab” that would “hike council tax across the board”. He said the government was “fiddling the funding model to punish councils that keep council tax low and moving funding to badly-run Labour councils that spend irresponsibly.”

That sounds an irresponsible statement to me. What little I know of life outside of Windsor and Maidenhead and the City of London does not suggest this is just about their “efficiencies”; these authorities have the benefit of massive wealth incoming through tourism and through the spending of the very wealthy people who have the good fortune of living in such nice places. We have broad shoulders and should pay.

As for the Local Government Pension Scheme, I hope we’ll see a fair funding review there as well.

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Thanks to DWP a multi-employer CDC plan was made final this week.

Posted on December 17, 2025 by henry tapper

Julian Barker CDC civil and a servant to us at the DWP

I have been told by the DWP that the CDC Unconnected Multi-Employer (UMES) Regulations have been approved by both Houses of Parliament and were formally made (I.E. signed by the minister) yesterday and will come into effect at the end of July 2026.

Although this had been assumed to happen, the fact that it has – is a great relief to those, like me, who have been friends of CDC for well over a decade and had at some points never thought this would happen.

I am pleased it has happened within days of the announcement of David Pitt-Watson’s imminent peerage. Recognition by the Labour Party and King Charles is an honour to David and to CDC, the two are synonymous.

It is persistent of the DWP civil servants led by Julian Barker to get this regulation on the books and as they are usually pilloried by me for not getting regulation to happen, I really ought to thank them.

We have a barrage of complaints that the roadmap for Retirement CDC does not map onto the needs of DC schemes to get the 2027 requirements from its separate roadmap. Let’s make a little noise for regulation arriving when expected.

The Hansard report of the CDC UMES regulations being read in the House of Lords , complete with some extensive speeches by Bryn Davies (Lord Brixton) and Baroness Sherlock (who acts for the Government on DWP matters) is here.

There is more of this to come but not this year and I suspect next. Many are arguing that this UMES CDC is unimportant, but that disregards the importance an increase in pay of up to 60% for the rest of your life , is to people my age! UMES CDC is here, Retirement CDC is not.

Julian has been through some serious illnesses in the past five years and I am very happy for him personally.

I will finish with a promise from the DWP which sums up why we all will be friends of CDC in time.

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Innovators ; so much for yesterday – what of tomorrow?

Posted on December 17, 2025 by henry tapper

I have reprinted the links to the video and slides from John Hamilton’s presentation yesterday. It is a mark of the interest the Stagecoach/Aberdeen (SASA) deal has had that the blogs surrounding John Hamilton’s appearance have had enormous interest.

But that deal is done and though I expect others will follow, it is dealing with the legacy of DB for the private sector

For most private sector companies, the question is what will the future bring and this is open to debate. To distort a famous saying…

Give me change but not now!

Just as legacy DB has struggled over whether to go with an insurer , stay with the sponsor or move to superfund, another sponsor or even the PPF, – so we are struggling with DC going forward.

It sounds churlish for me to point this out, so great the effort of Stagecoach with its legacy but it does still have 24,000 bus drivers who it employs today and will tomorrow.

My question to them and to the bus companies like them in the UK is what are you going to do and when are you going to do it. Because just as it seems obvious to run on your DB plans than hand the profits to the insurers , so it seems obvious that you consider the DC plans which you are putting in the hands of commercial providers for the meantime.

And here , staring us in the face is the other “obvious” thing for us all to consider

Torsten Bell

There is a number that emanates from consultancies including WTW and Aon but most recently from Hymans Robertson which talks of these new collective funds providing up to 60% of the DC funds we invest in individually.

That number is being used by the Pension Minister. If it is not disputed, why are we continuing to rely on  DC to pay workplace pensions? Why don’t we grasp the better CDC alternative as soon as we can, even if that will need some effort on all sides?

I suspect in the back of a lot of our minds lurks the statement “Give me Change but Not Now!”

So I put it to Stagecoach and the other bus drivers and the many other large companies who could take a lead on CDC, that now is the time to be bold just as the Trustees of Stagecoach were, just as Aberdeen was. For we cannot go on ducking the challenges we are faced!

Here is the great story of the past, I hope in a year’s time I will be printing the great story of the future!

 

Yesterday’s news

If you missed this  coffee morning presentation from John , you are in luck. It’s with you below, with a download if you want to share it – here.

If you want to see the slides they are below and they can be downloaded from this link.

Thanks to all that came and to those who tried but couldn’t get on the call. Let’s move on now – we have another challenge to consider!

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