The Personal Accounts Delivery Authority has announced a near £400,000 rebrand of it’s new offering. Goodbye Personal Accounts (which did exactly what it says on the tin) and Hello to NEST or more accurately perhaps, the NEST Corporation.

I have it on very good authority that this has no connection to SMERSH, the KGB or white furry cats being cuddled by mad dictators (although I think I can just about see Tim Jones stroking one!!), but is instead the new name for the organisation which will oversee the Peoples’ Pension Scheme (my term, a bit Post Office ish but pretty good I thought!!)

Whether this rebrand is a) worth the money – £8000 just for a egg shaped orange logo – or b) merely window dressing for an additional layer of complexity in our already over regulated pension universe, remains open for debate.

Only one player remains in the race to provide the infrastructure for this initiative, all the others having dropped out for one reason or another (the main one I suspect being that they couldn’t see the point of effectively replicating the National Insurance scheme and building a computer system which will almost certainly be inferior (that’s saying something) and too complex to be cost effective.

Having said that, any form of enforced pension saving beyond the Basic State Pension is better than nothing. But how long or if it will survive a change of Government in it’s present form is anyone’s guess.

What is clear is that one way or another, employers must start to plan for the introduction of NEST – and while we are aware that the commencement has been delayed from the original start date, I suspect that SOMETHING will be introduced even if modified from what is currently being expected. As I’ve said before, no political party seems to be able to resist meddling in pension policy. And I fully expect more legislation before too long.