Feb 8th, 2010
by Jennie Kreser.
Well, it’s not been the most exciting of weeks in the pension universe but I suppose the big story – well big for us pension junkies – is the announcement made by Angela Eagle that the Guaranteed Minimum Pension element of a pension will have to be equalised for men and women.
In fairness, she did state that this would only apply in respect of schemes falling into the Governments ‘junior’ lifeboat, the Financial Assistance Scheme, but there are few of us who believe that the principle will not be extended to the ‘big’ lifeboat, the Pension Protection Fund and from there to all schemes that carry GMP’s for their members, that is, those who contracted out of the second limb of the state pension arrangements.
Jan 15th, 2010
by Jennie Kreser.
I went to an excellent talk by Lindsay Tomlinson the Chairman of the NAPF last night. The man talks a lot of sense. The main thrust of his speech was concerning the now certain death of the the DB scheme and the rise of DC and with it NEST eggs.
It is now an acknowledged truth I think (and so does he) that DB will be a creature of history within the next 10 years or so except within the public sector. That is not to say that there won’t still be legacy schemes in run off of course but the writing has been on the wall for them for several years, accelerated perhaps by recent economic events but certainly not helped by overregulation, poor investment choices and increasing longevity.