Everything from policy reviews, to new regulation, less regulation and more innovation have appeared among the industry ‘wish list’ for pensions as we end 2021.
Professional Pensions asked its Pensions Buzz respondents to choose what issue or topic they would be on a pensions-themed Christmas wish list this year. Below are the responses we received…
Policy
- A timetable for the recommendations from the 2017 auto-enrolment (AE) review to be implemented.
- The pensions ‘statement season' idea to be shelved
- Accounting standards changed to remove pension assets and liabilities from company accounts
- A freeze on new consultations until changes from those issued in 2020 and 2021 are implemented
- A pair of scissors to cut up unnecessary red tape
- A later life commission
Pensions dashboards
- More clarity around the dashboards
- The pensions dashboards to be cancelled
Legislation and regulation
- A pause on any new legislation
- A revision of winding-up regulations to allow schemes to more easily secure liabilities
- A phased increase in minimum employer contributions
- An end to political dabbling
- A reversal of pension freedoms
- Less regulation, bureaucracy and government intervention
- Increase in AE contribution rates
- Increased minimum AE contributions
- Less regulation and box ticking
- No changes from official bodies or regulators for five years
- Reverse the Retail Prices Index reform
- Scrap ‘own risk assessment' rules
- Reduce excessive rules
- Do more to prevent scams
- Better streamline pensions legislation
Investment/economy
- Manager fees to be capped at ten basis points
- Retreat of pandemic inflation control
- New investment options that accommodate pension schemes' requirements in terms of income, ESG, and climate change issues
- Positive real returns
- Stable markets and lowed inflation
- Stock markets that always go up
Stewardship
- Stewardship and long-term sustainability unambiguously set as fiduciary duties
Tax
- Simplification for pensions tax
- A scrapping of the annual allowance (AA)
- An increase to the lifetime allowance
- Tax simplification so schemes can focus on members rather than red tape and compliance
- Increase the AA
The state pension
- That the government pays a decent state pension
- The triple lock is retained
- Private pensions are abolished and decent state pension benefits are given to all
Defined benefit
- The end of forced disclosure of documents for closed defined benefit (DB) schemes
- For the DB funding code to not "penalise" open immature schemes with strong covenants
- A better way of valuing liabilities
- More pressure on sponsors to make meaningful debt reduction contributions
Data
- A data cleansing wizard
- Clean data
Engagement
- Improved understanding of pensions by members
- Meaningful communication excitedly welcomed by all
- A magic button that engages employees with pensions
GMP
- A magic wand to make GMP's disappear
- A U-turn on the requirement to equalise historic transfer values
- Get rid of GMP equalisation
- Speed up GMP equalisation
- Introduce a simpler approach to GMP conversion
- GMP equalisation to be magicked away
ESG
- That Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures rules do not make investment managers and companies change their behaviours
