There has been much chatter in recent days about the Government’s effort to crack down on excessive boardroom pay.  Coincidentally (or conveniently?), we’re also approaching the annual bonus season at the big banks.  Now, I’m not suggesting that the inevitably lower banker bonuses will be claimed by the Government as evidence that it has found a way to tame the excesses of executive pay, however … Read more »

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Tags: Investment, Pensions

My wife kindly bought me a great stocking filler book for Christmas called “Universally Challenged” which lists some of the most bizarre answers people give when competing on TV quiz shows.

A few examples were:-                          

Q: In books written in English each line is printed and read starting at which side of the page?

A: The right

Q: What ‘T’ are people who live in a house paying rent to a landlord?

A: Terrorists

Q: What was Ghandhi’s first name?

A: Goosey

Now there’s little doubt that the incentive of all that cash, the pressure of being under the studio lights and the inquisitorial gaze of the likes of Anne Robinson and Jeremy Paxton, not to mention Vernon Kaye, Bradley Walsh and Jamie Theakston induces a high level of panic, not to mention complete brain freeze in some cases.

I’m not sure however what excuse some people have for giving the answers they have when they’ve had lots of time to think about them.

Unfortunately the DWP provided a similarly disappointing answer for many charities in the results of their consultation on Employer Debt ,  Read more »

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Nearly 30 pension funds have filed claims at the High Court seeking damages from Henderson Global Investors over claims it took too much risk with one of its funds, the Henderson PFI Secondary Fund II, when it used the majority of the fund’s assets to buy John Laing, a firm with a large pension deficit.

The fund subsequently lost 2/3rds of its value, not least because of the pension scheme deficit. Now I’m not seeking to comment on this case specifically and indeed Henderson’s have signalled they “will vigorously defend these proceedings” but more on some wider pension related implications.

I would have expected that at least when conducting due diligence on the investment Henderson would at least have been aware of the existence of a defined benefit pension liability Read more »

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Tags: FRS17, Investment

A New Year and in January developments in de-risking throughout 2010 were discussed. How would 2011 fare in comparison?

February hosted a long and sometimes confusing conversation about PIPs. Turns out it’s simple,……… honestly!

In a busy month of March we aired our opinions and gave a spring clean to these pieces:

• Transition to auto enrolment will not be automatic
• Watch out older people, Booth and Taylor are coming
• The public sector pensions challenge
• Gender based annuity pricing, Haruspicy and the end of science

Help for schools and colleges showed we are no fools in April with some guidance on FRS17 disclosures.

The joys of spring were not abound in May as we lost an “f” in pensions. There never was one?  I think you’ll ind……..

Inflation and its effects were being discussed in June as another quarter sees the inflation targets go by unachieved. On a more positive note the Actuarial Profession was inflated with a new influx of talented graduates from Queen’s University. We were there to welcome them to the industry and indeed are nurturing some of that talent within our business today.

Individuality was the theme of July’s hot topics. Section 75 Regulations fail to recognise the plight of the unattached charitable organisations among multi employer schemes. And, as tPR guidance on Incentive Exercises suggests trustees start with the view that they will not be in the members’ interests, we ask just how much trustees should assume all members have the same needs?

In August we tried to make sense of babysitting pensioners and whether they were truly responsible enough to take care of their own finances.

September brought another egg to the NEST in the form of NOW Pensions as a rival. All good sport or will it be rotten?

November saw us pushing the limits of data management. Are Trustees using all the tools at their disposal to  improve their data and meet tPR’s  deadline?

December and we are back to de-risking and not much festive cheer. We feature our article in the Actuarial Post.

Posted in: Blog
Tags: Actuarial, Pensions, Public Sector Pensions, Regulation, Retirement

Many leading charities will be reeling from the recent announcement from The Pensions Trust that they face significant shortfalls in a pension scheme which they had originally believed to be a defined contribution arrangement. The Growth Plan 3 (“GP3”), which for many charities was seen as a safe haven for fixed contributions and the provision of members AVC savings has now allegedly been impacted by the high court judgement recently handed down on the Bridge Trustees case and resulting legislation expected to be forthcoming from the Department of Work & Pensions (“DWP”).

This will undoubtedly be unwelcome news and cause major problems for around 500-600 organisations participating in GP3. Read more »

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I was kindly introduced to the word scotoma last week. The dictionary definition is ‘a mental blind spot; inability to understand or perceive certain matters.’ I would have found it difficult to find a better word to describe the on-going debate, and I use that word very loosely in this case, in respect of public sector pensions culminating in the strikes on 30th November.

Things have been moving at such a speed it’s hard to keep up and to pick out the fact from the rhetoric. The week of the strike began with a bit of school yard name calling as trade union Unite issued their “Dossier of hypocrisy” exposing the extent of cabinet minister’s pension entitlements. All that did was make the case that those particular public sector pensions need to be reformed as much as, if not more than, all the rest.

Unite then did its best to drag us back to the seventies and Citizen Smiths’s already outdated class war rhetoric by suggesting that “what they don’t support is a cabinet of millionaires” attacking their members pension benefits. So presumably it is happy with the long list of commentators who aren’t millionaires suggesting it might be a good idea to have a sensible discussion about sustainable pensions in both the public and private sector, which has to include some significant reforms in the public sector? Or possibly not. Read more »

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Tags: Actuarial, Pensions, Pensions Reform, Public Sector Pensions

Recent criticism of incentivised transfer values has thrown up some strong statements but is there so much to fuss about?

Alan Collins features in the Actuarial Post to dispel some myths in “Bribes, Bungs and Balderdash”

Posted in: Blog
Tags: Corporate, Retirement, Transfer Incentives

It is now over twelve months since the Pensions Regulator (tPR) published its Guidance on Record Keeping. The guidance emphasises the importance that tPR places on scheme data quality. For many in the industry, this publication merely confirmed what they already knew – that the member records for most schemes were in poor health, but very little was being done to tackle the problem.

With this guidance tPR did more than just mention the elephant in the room, they shouted about it for all to hear and addressed a warning to those who thought that they could continue to ignore that pesky pachyderm. The message was clear: scheme member data needs to be audited and brought up to a prescribed standard before December 2012. Read more »

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Tags: Data, Pensions Regulator, Trusteeship

A little tale of everyday folk and how sharing and best intentions may not always achieve the results you expect……………..

Peter, Graham, Phil and Rachel have just started their arts course at University in London and are sharing a house. Being arts students they have a lot of spare time on their hands. One evening, after a hard day staring out of the window, they’re in the pub (unusual for students I know!!) and Graham mentions he really needs a car for a part-time job he has on the other side of the city, and can’t get there easily using public transport because of the timing but he can’t afford it with all his other bills. Read more »

Posted in: Blog
Tags: Defined Contribution, Pension Funding, Pensions