When is a promise not a promise? In my household, safeguarding of confectionary and sharing of toys are both subject to frequent exemptions. But beyond domestic squabbles, the subject is getting an airing in the pensions world. In the firing line is th…Read more…
Protecting the pension promise
When is a promise not a promise? In my household, safeguarding of confectionary and sharing of toys are both subject to frequent exemptions. But beyond domestic squabbles, the subject is getting an airing in the pensions world. In the firing line is th…Read more…
Protecting the pension promise
When is a promise not a promise? In my household, safeguarding of confectionary and sharing of toys are both subject to frequent exemptions. But beyond domestic squabbles, the subject is getting an airing in the pensions world. In the firing line is th…Read more…
Protecting the pension promise
When is a promise not a promise? In my household, safeguarding of confectionary and sharing of toys are both subject to frequent exemptions. But beyond domestic squabbles, the subject is getting an airing in the pensions world. In the firing line is th…Read more…
State Pension Age: Cridland identifies the challenges but the way forward remains unclear
John Cridland, one suspects, has probably spent much of the summer in a darkened room with a cold flannel over his eyes. The former boss of the employer’s group the CBI has produced, under the auspices of his Independent Review of State Pension Age, a useful and sophisticated account of the many…Read more…
Pensions: It’s a man’s, man’s, man’s world
The late James Brown had a complicated enough life without worrying about UK pensions saving. But the Godfather of Soul’s famous, if patronising, take on gender politics provides an appropriate soundtrack for the state of British retirement savings. Women make up just 36 per cent of those eligible…Read more…
Unions and investors come together to call time on poor employment practices at Sports Direct
Sports Direct is a household name, but one that is now nearly as famous for its use of zero hours contracts and mistreating its workforce as for the sportswear sold in its high street stores. Tomorrow the company’s Annual General Meeting brings the opportunity for investors to raise their voices…Read more…
The army of older people forced out of work by illness
Forget the stereotype of the cruise or the conservatory. For many babyboomers reaching their sixties means joblessness and ill health, according to TUC research published today. Around one in eight (12%) men and women are forced to stop working before state pension age due to ill-health or…Read more…
Another attempt to pick the state pension lock
Former Pensions Ministers don’t retire quietly from public life it appears. Baroness Altmann, the latest to depart Caxton House, has since criticised the difficulty of long-term policy making in government . And, over the weekend, called for the ending of the triple lock that governs state pension…Read more…
As Altmann exits, where is Workie?
Pensions Minister Baroness Altmann is to leave government, we learned over the weekend. The reshuffle fortunes of her sidekick Workie, the much lampooned multi-coloured monster she launched to promote workplace pensions, have yet to be confirmed. Altma…Read more…
Our banking system just isn’t working for the real economy
Today the BBC are reporting that over 600 local bank branches have been closed in the last 12 months. It’s a tragedy both for staff who have lost jobs and for the communities that need the service they provided. It also poses a crucial question for unions about how we get the kind of banking…Read more…
European pensions regulator steps back from radical funding proposals
The European pensions regulator has stepped back from an attempt to standardise pension funding rules across the European Union. The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) has concluded, rather unsurprisingly, that the diversity of European pension schemes means that…Read more…
#Budget2016: Pensions freedom tax boost for Treasury but what now for the workplace pension?
For the Chancellor, it was one bit of fiscal news to cheer in a Budget of downward revisions, cuts and slices. The Treasury has netted £200 million more than expected in tax from pension fund withdrawals after dramatically loosening restrictions in April.
The post #Budget2016: Pensions freedom tax…Read more…
#Budget2016: Lifetime ISA – an attempt to kill two birds with one stone
The Budget spectacle is usually littered with animal references: rabbits out of hats, foxes shot and so on. This year we can add to the zoological ranks, an attempt to kill two birds with one stone. A Chancellor faced with a generation struggling to ge…Read more…
92 pages but one clear message: what today’s employers’ pensions survey tells us
The Department for Work and Pensions’ employers’ pension survey published today stretches across 92 pages but there is one clear message apparent to readers: little is going to change regarding the level of UK pension saving without action on automatic enrolment minimum contribution rates….Read more…
Seven tests for fairer pensions tax
The hitherto obscure subject of pensions tax relief is likely to be in the foreground when George Osborne reveals the content of his latest Budget later this month. On the table is a potential move to flat-rate tax relief, an approach favoured by the TUC. But, if given the nod, key decisions about…Read more…
Our pensions are still leaving many behind
The respected Pensions Policy Institute is today publishing a report, sponsored by the TUC and others, looking at those groups who remain under-pensioned. It shows that despite the remarkable success of automatic enrolment in bringing around six million more people into workplace pensions, those…Read more…
Regulator fears pension freedom mis-selling
There was always a remarkable haziness about what the pension freedom reforms announced in Budget 2014 were meant to achieve. While most government pension initiatives are designed at improving incomes in retirement or making savings more secure, George Osborne’s revolution offered freedom…Read more…
Flying another kite – has George Osborne solved his pension tax conundrum?
The sky above Number 11 Downing Street must be a mass of tangled string and paper. In the summer, the Chancellor flew a kite about changing taxation on pensions to resemble that of ISA accounts. Instead of up-front tax relief, savers would pay tax on t…Read more…
Freedom, fairness and a TUC pensions conference
Savers in their mid-to-late 50s are the group making the highest level of withdrawals from their pension pots, according to the latest figures from the financial regulator. While it is very early days for so-called Pensions Freedom – the government’s great experiment with UK savings – there are…Read more…