
Pensions Goth loves to explain what’s going on in pensions, what Government, industry and regulators are up to and what changes might mean for members. Pensions Goth loves cats, heavy metal music and is passionate about the truth, data and making sense of pensions.
She also tweets as #Pensions_Goth and you can find her on blue sky at @pensionsgoth.bsky.social
Subscribe to Pensions Goth Blog

Welcome to Pensions Goth Blog
Insights, stories, commentary and thoughts on pensions policy and events.
Blog categories
- Adequacy
- Advice
- AI
- Annuities
- Automatic enrolment
- Behavioural economics
- Benefits
- Carers
- Chancellor
- Charge cap
- Charges
- Collective Defined Contribution
- Consolidation
- Contributions
- Dashboards
- Decumulation
- Defined Benefit
- Defined Contribution
- Disability
- Drawdown
- DWP
- Early access
- Engagement
- ESG
- Ethnicity
- FCA
- Financial inclusion
- Gambling
- Gender
- Governance
- Guidance/advice
- History
- Housing
- Income
- Inflation
- Influencers
- Inheritance Tax
- International
- Investment
- Labour market
- LGPS
- Long term care
- Mansion House
- Master Trusts
- Modern slavery
- Nature
- Pension freedoms
- Pensions Commission
- Pensions gap
- Poverty
- Private pensions
- Regulation
- Responsible investment
- Retirement
- Romans
- Self employed
- Small pots
- Social media
- State Pension
- State Pension age
- Steve Webb
- Tax
- Triple lock
- Trustees
- Uncategorized
- Value for Money
- VFM
- WASPI
- Water
- Women
-
Embedding care and contribution into private pensions
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…
-
Mansion House: a concession that does not address the concern
Ministers are planning to reintroduce pension scheme investment mandation powers into the pensions bill, after the House of Lords removed them. The revised approach would cap the mandation power at 10% of assets and position it as a backstop to the Mansion House Accord, rather than an open-ended…
-
Is Australia’s pension tax fix relevant for the UK?
Australia has a feature in its pension system that changes how tax is applied to pension saving for people on low incomes and shows how support can be distributed differently. In Australian superannuation, contributions are taxed at 15% when they enter the fund, and for most workers this…
-
Conflict highlights inconsistencies in the system
The conflict with Iran is a reminder of something we tend to ignore: the system works as long as things move slowly and struggles when they don’t. Retirement income is built on that assumption. Prices change gradually and incomes adjust slowly. Over time, things broadly work but conflict…
-
Nest Insight and enrolling the self employed
Ruth and Will kindly talked me through Nest Insight’s work with the self employed Pensions Goth: Let’s start with the trials you’re running how they work in practice. Will Sandbrook: We’ve been running a programme of work on the self-employed for several years. Early research explored attitudes to…
-
Member representation is fading but the case for it has not gone away
The TUC launched a report yesterday (researched and written by me) looking at the decline of member voice in pension trustee boards. Member representation is declining not because anyone made a conscious decision to remove member trustees. It is the result of changes in the pensions landscape. The…
