Allison Plager, financial journalist, looks at how consultants are getting on with investment issues for DC schemes as they gradually take over from DB
As the decline of the much loved defined benefit (DB) pension scheme continues apace, companies are offering money purchase schemes to replace them. The National Association of Pension Funds’ Annual Survey 2011 showed that 23% of final salary pension schemes are now shut to new members and...
Financial journalist Allison Plager explores the popularity of group self invested personal pensions as an employer sponsored pension scheme
Flexibility comes at a price – or at least it does when pensions are involved. Defined contribution (DC) schemes are the inevitable way forward for companies offering a corporate pension plan, as defined benefit (DB) schemes become increasingly unaffordable. DC schemes can, for example, be a...
Auto-enrolment presents great opportunities for the defined contribution market says Allison Plager.
There is no escaping the fact that pensions are big news. This time last year, when the last Pensions World defined contribution (DC) pension schemes survey appeared, it was BBC journalists who were striking about changes to their schemes. This year, it is head teachers who are threatening strike...
Lawyers have got their work cut out keeping up with the constant change and complexities of pensions legislation explains James Thomas, financial journalist.
After yet another year in which lawyers have bemoaned the excessive complexity, overwhelming volume and relentless pace of change of pensions legislation, one wonders how great the temptation must be to simply tear up the statute book and start again. Indeed, legislation it seems is more usually...
How are pension scheme trustees taking to fiduciary management? Slowly, it would seem reports Allison Plager
Well, no one ever said fiduciary management would be the next best thing after sliced bread. And given that, along with accountants, pension scheme trustees are among the most conservative beings on the planet (and rightly so as they are responsible for members’ financial security in old...
Ceri Jones, financial journalist, reports on the training available for trustees who have so much to learn in so little time
The obligations on pension scheme trustees have widened in recent years, at the same time as they are struggling to contend with a swiftly changing regulatory environment and a wide range of extremely complex issues that range from sponsor covenants, to enhanced transfer values, age...
The outsourcing market is busy. Allison Plager, financial journalist, finds out why
Third party administration providers (TPAs) have never had it so good. According to Mike McMillen of
Towers Watson, “activity is at a record high for outsourcing generally, both for first timers and those reviewing”. After some 18 months of planning blight, following the...
Independent trustees are in great demand to help lay trustees make better decisions explains Allison Plager
No one said that being a pension scheme trustee was easy. Trustees have to understand a vast range of information and regulations, looking after the interests of the pension scheme members in a world where change seems to be the constant. It may have been less onerous when defined benefit (DB)...
Don't keep your pension scheme a secret; spill the beans on the benefits to your employees advises Allison Plager
If there is good news, people want to hear it. Look at how the media – whether print or online – was swamped with images of the royal wedding. We couldn’t get enough of it. It may seem an odd metaphor for the company pension scheme, but if you think about it the pension scheme...
Pension schemes are eschewing equities in their bid to mitigate risk. Allison Plager reports
Against a background of austerity measures in the UK, the bail out by the Euro-zone of Greece in April 2010, the explosion of the BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico and the snow in December having a detrimental effect on everyone’s Christmas shopping, the FTSE 100 reached 5,899.94 by the end of...
Monitoring the employer covenant is particularly important during this fragile economic recovery reports Allison Plager
The recent recession has shown that it is not possible to be certain that the economy is always going to flourish. Politicians may rashly promise the end of “boom and bust”, but in reality, given the global nature of finance and business, this is not a promise easily kept. The UK...
Allison Plager, financial journalist, reports on the de-risking options currently available to pension schemes
Remember the good old days? Defined benefit pension schemes used to be – well, maybe not a joy to run, but nowhere near the headache they are now. For a start, the problem was not what to do about the deficit, but how to deal with the surplus (the days of employer contribution holidays are...
As the agenda for pension schemes lengthens, consultant services continue to be in demand reports Allison Plager, financial journalist
Was there ever a time when pensions were not in the news? Not everyone has had to get to grips with the extensive reforms to pensions made by the Finance Act 2004 which came into effect on 6 April 2006, but since then there has been the great higher rate tax relief debacle, auto-enrolment and the...
Now that SIPPs have reached maturity, is the market in decline? asks Allison Plager.
Who wants a self invested personal pension (SIPP)? Lots of people it would seem. SIPPs have grown in popularity in the last few years, not only for the individual investor, but also for companies looking for a defined contribution (DC) scheme. SIPPs started out as the preserve of the wealthy, but...
How is the group personal pension, defined contribution and stakeholder market shaping up for auto-enrolment? asks Allison Plager
You never miss what you have got until you lose it. Maybe this statement is not worthy of Confucius, but it has a certain poignancy in relation to pensions and, boy, does it seem that we have grown attached to our pension rights. At the beginning of November, for example, BBC journalists heeded a...
As more employers contemplate closing their DB schemes, how do lawyers see the pensions endgame panning out? James Thomas surveys the legal scene
A glance at a pensions lawyer’s in tray is as useful an indicator as any of the current state of occupational provision and of its future direction. And such a glimpse suggests that the trend among pension schemes towards focusing on liabilities – which our annual lawyers’...
Allison Plager, financial journalist, explores the relatively new, to the UK at least, concept of fiduciary management
Pension scheme trustees’ lives do not get any easier. As well as coping with the myriad regulations that have been heaped upon them over recent years, they have also had to cope with the worst recession in years. Making sure that the pension scheme will have enough money to pay its current...
Pensions hold no fear for consultants. Allison Plager finds out why
If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood,
Who ya gonna call?
Pensionbusters!
Apologies to the well-known 1980s film Ghostbusters, but who would ever have thought that the film’s theme song would adapt so well to pensions? The next stanza is just as good:
If there...
“What’s new in the world of pensions law?” asks James Thomas. The answer, as ever, is “everything”
In the ten years that I have been conducting the annual Pensions World survey of pensions lawyers, the one constant has been that of constant change. And this year is no different; indeed, the advent of the global downturn has perhaps compounded the rate of change, resulting – according to...
Allison Plager, financial journalist, on the adjustments DC schemes will have to make to cope with the changes ahead for pension provision
Who can doubt that defined contribution pension (DC) schemes are in the ascendant? Defined benefit (DB) schemes continue to close, especially to new members, as sponsoring companies and trustees struggle with funding and regulation, and instead employers are turning to DC schemes which divest...
