Thousands of women trying to qualify for the full state pension will be hit with a massive price hike.

During a recent lively commons debate, Rosie Winterton responded to the Conservatives’ call to scrap compulsory annuitisation by saying that a short-term measure wouldn’t help the majority of pensioners, and that “other options are still open to people at that age, such as alternatively secured pensions (ASPs)”.

Standard Life and Prudential have both reported rises in group pensions business, while Scottish Life and Friends Provident have seen falls.

Employers are being offered a group personal pension (GPP) that comes with free consultancy advice and only a 0.4%-0.65% annual management charge for employees.

A proposal to set up an independent public sector pensions commission has been defeated in the House of Lords.

Barclays Global Investors (BGI) has launched an AAA-rated money market fund.

Lane Clark & Peacock has called on the European Commission to consider clarifying the purpose and priorities of Solvency II.

Andrew Cox, partner at consultant, said: “Many will regard the Basel II framework as having failed to deliver financial stability, or even contributing to instability, because of an unhealthy reliance on financial models. People are rightly questioning whether Solvency II is likely to do any better.”

Scheme sponsors can put defined contribution (DC) pension scheme members at ease during the financial crisis by communicating with them more, according to Fidelity International.

The pensions industry has broadly supported insurers’ dec-ision to increase some pension exit fees.

The average retirement age for local government pension scheme (LGPS) members has risen consistently over the last 10 years.

The Pension Protection Fund (PPF) is to build a financial reserve to protect itself against the liabilities of 7,400 schemes that have seen significant funding falls.

Financial, academic and medical communities must work together to develop an approach to mortality forecasting, according to Paternoster’s Richard Willets.

Most companies are failing to measure whether they benefit from money spent on pensions, according to a survey.

Less than half of companies measure whether expenditure increases productivity, staff loyalty or shareholder value, research from Alexander Forbes Financial Services shows.

The poll found many firms were at a loss as to why they spent millions on pensions.

Buyout deals that were close to completing have been put on ice as insurers become unwilling or unable to transact over the short term.

A group of global investors is calling on 9,000 listed companies to sign up to international standards on human rights, the environment and anti-corruption measures.

The Pensions

Commission calculated that 4.8 million employees do not join their company pension scheme, and now Prudential has put a figure of £5.07bn on the consequences of this action.

The impact of the credit crunch showed up starkly in bond fund results for the third quarter, according to Standard & Poor’s.

Most pooled fund sectors failed to achieve positive median returns last quarter, according to BNY Mellon Asset Servicing.

Pension schemes should invest in small caps, according to Deryck Noble-Nesbitt, who leads the smaller companies team at Close Investments.

“Now is the time to start acting to invest in smaller companies while sentiment is poor,” he said.

“It is important to buy in a falling market as other investors exist. Chasing a rising market will reduce the potential for strong future returns.”

The event

The Pensions & Investment UK Scheme Awards celebrate what is good in UK pensions practice – work that not only gets a job done, but has a major bearing upon whether individuals reach retirement with a realistic expectation of a future of financial independence.

I wrote in January about the overuse of hackneyed phrases such as ‘unprecedented collapse’ or ‘a once-in a lifetime event’. My point was that the situation really wasn’t that bad. But that was then; now is the time to be using superlatives.

As women often save much less than men they might be expected to benefit from the personal accounts. In practice, women will typically still save less. By Fiona Tait.

Hedge

Protection against a particular outcome. A hedge fund covers a wide range of funds whose managers are trying to generate returns independently of any general movement in markets.

With many changes as well as financial turmoil to contend with in 2008, there is hard work ahead for schemes leading up to the 2012 pension reforms. By Conor Breen.

Should the UK fund infrastructure plans by using pension funds as viable long-term investors, asks Tom Powdrill.

NAPF Trustee Conference:
Understanding and controlling risk
November 26, 2008
One Great George Street

“If you are 10 years old and you have to look after your mother and father, someone has got to help you so that you can grow up as a child,” says Ian Price, divisional director of pensions at St James’s Place.

Although a surplus in an ongoing scheme may be considered notional, the debate over ownership of surplus and the ways in which such a surplus can be used is very real.

Fiduciary management is a solution to dynamic investment whose hour has surely come.

Wholehearted acceptance of fiduciary management in the Netherlands is no guarantee of similar success for the approach in the UK, says Matthew Craig.

Fiduciary management offers time-deficient trustees the opportunity to delegate day-to-day management while still retaining overall control of the pension scheme, says Patrick Disne.

Background

SEI is one of the leading providers of fiduciary management for pension schemes worldwide. The company was founded in 1968 in Pennsylvania, USA and has been at the forefront of investment and pension innovation ever since.

AllenbridgeEPIC Investment Advisers (AEIA) has appointed Keith Bray and Jim Tennant to its investment panel.

Standard Life has appointed Jamie Jenkins (pic) as head of employee wealth solutions in its marketing division.

Alexander Forbes Financial Services has promoted Jarrod Parker (pic) as employee benefits director in a bid to become the UK’s leading pensions and benefit adviser.

Karl Dasher (pic) has been appointed head of fixed income for Schroders.

He reports to Alan Brown, group chief investment officer, who heads up the new fixed income investment committee (FIIC) at the firm.