Punter Southall has published the latest in its series of High Earners Survival Guides. In this latest note, it covers recent developments including:
HMRC and the DWP have published a number of draft regulations relating to the annual and lifetime allowances
changes have been made to the...
The international accounting standards board has published a “near final” draft of its revised pension accounting standard IAS19.
As expected, the revised standard is to remove two key features of existing pensions accounting standard, the “expected return on assets” and...
The Pensions Advisory Service
New advisers
I am pleased to welcome Craig Blackwood, Robert McIlroy, Richard Pedley, Richard Purdue, Paul Smith and Paul Turner as new advisers to TPAS.
We are always looking for volunteers to help with casework, which can be dealt with from home....
Planning to meet the challenges ahead
The 2011–14 corporate plan, published at the end of April, highlights the Regulator’s ongoing priorities: addressing defined benefit (DB) funding challenges; improving standards in defined contribution (DC); and helping employers to prepare for the new employer duties.
The DB...
A roundup of recent worldwide news and developments in the pension arena, by Anne Bennett, Mercer
Dutch and Australian experts in talks at pension co-operation summit
Senior pension industry figures from the Netherlands and Australia met at a recent summit in the Netherlands organised by the Centre for Investor Education. The focus of the talks was the sharing of knowledge and ideas, with...
Employers are preparing to provide members of final salary pension schemes with ways to access more of their pensions earlier in retirement, according to Towers Watson. The firm says that new options for members of defined benefit (DB) schemes will be a consequence of less stringent rules on how...
Following its consultation, the government has decided not to allow early access to pension savings. It concluded that early access to pension savings should not be considered at present because:
there is limited evidence that allowing early access would have a positive effect on overall...
Scheme sponsors and trustees continue to have doubts about the sustainability of the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) as a standalone entity according to Barnett Waddingham’s third annual PPF survey.
Many survey respondents felt that the methods used for assessing the levy are not a fair...
The Pension Protection Fund (PPF)’s new pension protection levy framework will take effect from 2012/13.
Key features of the new framework include:
fixing levy rules for three years to provide certainty
averaging funding levels so that short term volatility in financial markets is...
Nest, the National Employment Savings Trust, is too expensive, John Cridland, CBI director-general, said to guests at a recent Towers Watson dinner.
Nest will charge members 0.3% annually with an annual contribution charge of 1.8% initially. But Mr Cridland said: “Nest has an effective 0....
The details of how the government scheme to make payments to Equitable Life policyholders will work have been published by Mark Hoban MP, Financial Secretary to the Treasury.
In line with the Financial Secretary’s ambition to start making payments by the middle of this year, the scheme is...
TPR starts countdown
The Pensions Regulator (TPR) is writing to the chief executives of the UK’s biggest companies, alerting them to their new pension duties, which are being introduced on a gradual or “staged” basis according to employer size. The Regulator is providing a...
A generation of Britons faces a cash-strapped retirement as people ignore or refuse to respond to the changing nature of pension provision in the UK, a new report, The Future of Retirement, from HSBC shows.
Members of the UK’s Ostrich Generation know they will live longer than previous...
The Pensions Policy Institute has updated its Pensions Primer which provides essential information on the UK pensions framework and pensions policy. This version of the Pensions Primer reflects the current position of, and legislated future changes to, the UK pension system as at 12...
The £1.3bn Plumbing and Mechanical Services (UK) Industry Pension Scheme has issued a plea to pensions minister Steve Webb to think again about either the withdrawal of or significant reduction in contracting-out rebates which were announced as part of the Green Paper on the creation...
HM Treasury is consulting on employer asset-backed pension contributions to clarify the tax rules in this area. The news has been welcomed by pensions experts as the arrangement can give rise to tax anomalies. In 2011 £3bn of assets will be used in asset backed funding structures.
Pension...
The Department for Work and Pensions has this week set out standards for default options in automatic enrolment defined contribution pension schemes in new guidance.
Commenting on the guidance, Mario Lopez-Areu, CBI senior pensions policy adviser, said: “With auto-enrolment coming in, it...
Over 90% of major institutional investors now vote all or the great majority of their shares in UK companies; nearly two thirds now publish their voting records according to the Investment Management Association (IMA)’s Adherence to the FRC’s Stewardship Code survey.
The survey,...
The Minister for Pensions, Steve Webb, has called on industry to look into misuse of enhanced transfer value schemes: “We urgently need to make sure that we root bad practice out of the market. The industry can’t go on offering superficially attractive deals to people that ultimately...
UK pension schemes have fared relatively well over the past year according to the KPMG Pensions Accounting Survey 2011.
Most UK companies saw pension balance sheets improve over 2010, with strong asset returns more than offsetting slightly tighter real discount rates. Industry...
