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TPR urged to streamline DB transfer process
Royal London has raised concerns with The Pensions Regulator (TPR) that defined benefit (DB) transfer value quotes are too often becoming invalid before members are ready to transfer. A newly-generated...
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Duncan Howorth: The pension dashboard and the art of the possible
In just a few weeks’ time, we will have a glimpse of a new system that could deliver enormous benefits to consumers, advisers and the wider pensions sector, writes Duncan Howorth. A prototype of the...
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Mike Morrison: Hammond scrapes the ‘Goldilocks’ test
Now the dust has settled, Mike Morrison considers the principal pension talking points of a Budget that appears to have offered just enough to write indignantly about but perhaps not to do too much...
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Lee Halpin: Is a DB transfer thematic review on the horizon?
Retirement planners’ instinctive reaction to the idea of a DB transfer thematic review might be to wince but, says Lee Halpin, if it could bring greater certainty around regulatory good practice, it...
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‘Feature-rich’ products now post-freedom priority for advisers – Defaqto
Advisers ranked ‘product and proposition’ as the most important factor in pension provider service, Defaqto found in its annual survey of the market. Advisers were invited to rank six areas of provider...
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Government rules out imminent major pension reform
A letter from the Treasury to AJ Bell appears to rule out any major reforms of the UK’s pension tax framework over the next few years, explaining “now is not the right time” for significant changes....
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Government reviews recommend later retirement age
Two reports for the government published today – one by John Cridland, the other an analysis for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – have raised the prospect of millions of people working...
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Charles Goodman: Defining contributions
Charles Goodman considers the vexed question of how much anyone should save into their pension and concludes the government first needs to define roughly what a reasonable retirement income looks like....
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‘Serious attention’ needed to make Cridland recommendations success
John Cridland’s report on the state pension age may have offered little in the way of surprises but it has provoked a number of warnings the government has its work cut out to make any of the proposed...
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CPS paper proposes two-part ‘auto-protection’ policy
The Centre for Policy Studies’ (CPS) new ‘auto-protection’ paper suggests retirees should be automatically enrolled into drawdown at private pension age and then, at 80, residual pots should be...
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Get real: Guarantees are the answer to pension freedom
New pension rules haven’t diminished the need for guaranteed income, argues Simon Massey. Pension freedom is rapidly approaching its second birthday and, on the surface, it should be a happy...
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Copia ‘first DFM’ to launch specialist decumulation portfolios
Copia Capital Management has launched a range of managed portfolios that use Blackrock’s iShares exchange-traded funds [ETFs] and are purpose-built for the decumulation phase of retirement planning....
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Pension contributions hit ‘all-time high’– Salisbury House Wealth
Total UK personal pension contributions jumped almost a fifth to hit an all-time high last year, according to Salisbury House Wealth, although the self-employed are contributing significantly less than...
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50,000 mothers miss out on ‘vital’ pension rights, claims Royal London
The number of mothers unnecessarily missing out on ‘vital’ pension rights because of a change in the child benefit rules has doubled in the last two years, according to Royal London. Following the...
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Pension transfers: The momentum keeps growing
Regulation and auto-enrolment are likely to result in transfer volumes increasing in 2017, argues Paul Pettitt. In 2016, the Origo Options Transfers service completed over £25bn of pensions transfers –...
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Lorna Blyth: The ‘heat map’ of withdrawal rate sustainability
By categorising income withdrawal sustainability ‘scores’ into different bands, explains Lorna Blyth, advisers can help clients understand what good and bad levels of withdrawal look like. One concern...
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Bob Champion: A drawdown rule of thumb
Current rules of thumb on drawdown are not so fit-for-purpose as those on pension savings – so Bob Champion has come up with a simple one of his own. We are all familiar with rules of thumb when it...
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Retirement Planner Awards 2017 now open for entries
Do you think you stand head-and-shoulders above the rest when it comes to providing top-quality retirement planning and pensions advice services? If so, now is the time to enter the Retirement Planner...
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Transfers into SIPPs double post-pension freedoms
The amount of funds transferred into self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) has more than doubled in the two years since the pension freedoms were implemented, new data has shown. While pre-April 2015...
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Martin Tilley: Now you see it, now you don’t
The announcement and reversal of proposed changes to self-employed National Insurance contributions is just the latest in a long line of pension policy rethinks dating back a decade and a half, sighs...
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