Bee-Mail archive
Bee-Mail - 17 June 2010
For the Greater Good
I'm just off the coast of Guernsey at the moment on a cruise ship where I've just spoken at a conference for IFAs and HR directors. The good thing about speaking on a boat is that you quite literally get a captive audience; most helpful if you're talking about pensions.
In the questions following my talk I was asked about the way means-tested entitlements for the elderly affect pension savings, and in particular, will affect auto-enrolled pension savings.
This is the most important issue in UK pensions right now and it's something our new Government simply must deal with before the new reforms begin to bite from 2012.
If it is not possible for employers and advisers to stand up in front of workplace meetings and say "I recommend that you all join the new pension scheme" then these reforms are, quite frankly, going nowhere.
There are various ways this can be achieved, the simplest being to raise the trivial commutation limit so that people who find at retirement that their pension savings are devalued can get their money back.
As usual, and purely coincidentally once more, this topic is one I happen to have covered in my Pensions Conversations comic strip in Pensions Week this week. That strip is called For the Greater Good and you can get to read it by simply clicking the link there if you like.
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