One topic that featured in the majority of the discussion panels at the Pensions and Lifetime Association’s (PLSA) annual conference in Liverpool last week was the need for clarity and long-term vision from the government.
In the last two years, the UK government – the previous conservative government and the current labour government – has launched multiple consultations affecting the pensions industry.
The various consultations include consolidation, productive finance, value for money, lifetime savings, dashboards, automatic enrolment, among other things. In addition, there is also an overall pensions review currently underway.
In one session, Jamie Fiveash, chief executive officer of Smart Pensions, said the industry and government need to “get on with stuff that everybody agrees on, such as dashboards”.
He said: “Let’s just get it done and then [the government] should set a long-term vision and set a clear roadmap”.
This was echoed by Patrick Heath-Lay, CEO at People’s Partnership, who said that while the industry will react to what the government is asking it to do, it can’t do it without clarity. He said that clarity on the destination from the government is “really key”.
With the pensions review providing the industry and the government with an opportunity to change what the system looks like in the future, Steve Charlton, managing director for defined contribution at SEI, said the UK pensions industry needs a “coherent objective” with “some longevity to it”.
He said: “Maybe 15-20 years which would suggest that it has to have the political thinking and the belief that our pension [system] is the magic money box taken out of it.”
On the same panel, Paddy Dowdall, assistant director at the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, said that whatever direction the government takes with the pensions review, it should “just stick to it and give it a length of time to bed in”.
Julian Barker, head of policy, collective defined contribution pensions, costs and charges, and decumulation at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), agreed that there is “a lot happening”. However, he said that there is a reason for it.
“The industry has become quite entrenched in many ways of what it does and how it does things, and now is the right time to be trying to sort some of those things out.
“But I think it’s very clear that we can expect there to be fewer schemes that are larger, schemes that have more diverse investments, more focused on outcomes, making use of higher savings levels, and schemes being better designed to offer members a smoother journey into retirement and providing for them the sorts of things that members want, and also developing the new products that are needed to do that.”
Read the digital edition of IPE’s latest magazine
No comments yet