Category: Carers
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The road to Pensions Goth – a Pensions Net-Work after dinner speech
Adequacy, Automatic enrolment, Behavioural economics, Benefits, Carers, Decumulation, Defined Benefit, Defined Contribution, Disability, DWP, Early access, Ethnicity, Financial inclusion, Gender, History, Housing, Income, Inflation, Labour market, Long term care, Mansion House, Pension freedoms, Pensions Commission, Pensions gap, Poverty, Private pensions, Retirement, Self employed, State Pension, State Pension age, Triple lock, WomenI never meant to end up in pensions. In fact, I spent the first 15 years or so of my life dreaming about overthrowing capitalism. My father was a Marxist and fed this passion, telling me I would grow up to be a leader of men, and I actually felt that being a revolutionary wasn’t…
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The UK pension system is built on the recognition of paid work, most clearly in private pensions where contributions are paid from earnings, and outcomes depend on how much and how consistently someone has been paid over time. The state pension recognises some time out of work, but in a more limited and separate way.…
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There’s a current mismatch between policy, practice and how pension outcomes are determined. New State Pension entitlement is built from individual NI records and, in most cases, people can’t build entitlement from a spouse as under the previous system. Workplace pensions have shifted. In DB, dependent support is often built in, but in DC, outcomes…
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The FCA is proposing to replace the existing pension projections framework for interactive digital tools, which was designed for static illustrations, with a new regime intended to support more flexible and personalised modelling. The aim is to allow providers to reflect different contribution patterns, retirement ages and ways of taking income, rather than presenting a…
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I was speaking at FT Adviser’s Financial Advice Forum event yesterday and I was asked about what the SPa review may yield. It got me thinking about the stagnation in life expectancy increases. In 2020/22 life expectancy projections were around the same level they were at in 2010–2012 for females, and slightly lower for males,…
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State Pension age is rising. 15 years ago, it was 60 for women and 65 for men, and it is now on a slow path to 68. Both the Pensions Commission and the State Pension age review are considering adequacy. This makes it the right moment to examine how we support people who leave the…
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In its Pathways to Work report, the Work and Pensions Select Committee raised concerns about the impact of proposed benefit changes on older people: “We put it to the Minister that the changes to PIP eligibility and UC would disproportionately affect older people, despite that group being less amenable to incentives to work. He said…
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The new Pensions Commission aims to finish what Turner, Drake, and Hill started. Its scope focuses on adequacy, fairness, and risk. But, it misses a recognition of how people move through working life and into retirement. The Commission identifies system-level challenges, but does not fully account for how individual experience shapes pension outcomes over time.…
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The state pension underpayment scandal, which has already affected over 130,000 people and could ultimately involve up to 400,000, would not have come to light without the persistence of former Pensions Minister, Sir Steve Webb. His work, supported by campaigners and advisers, has pushed the Government to acknowledge systemic failings and compensate many of those…
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In this week’s Pensions Goth blog I talk about how we can close the pensions gender gap, how tomorrow is the last day to pay to fill in gaps in your National Insurance record missed since 2006, and insights from Morgan Vine at the TUC Pensions Conference on Wednesday 2nd April 2025. Many thanks to…