Policy progress

As some of my colleagues know (because I keep threatening them with my extensive collection of holiday snaps), I recently returned from a fantastic birdwatching holiday in Costa Rica. The wildlife was stunning and the places were amazing – all exactly as I hoped they would be.

The trip was organised by a British wildlife tour company, and in the latter stages I discovered I was the only one of our group of ten who was actually returning to work on the Monday; everyone else was either long retired or early retired or not really retired but living off their ample savings and investments. Lucky them!

The tour was billed as an opportunity to enjoy Costa Rica’s incredible biodiversity, but I started to feel it was just as much an advertisement for the golden age of British DB pension provision.

It reminded me of the conversation I had a few years ago with a wildlife guide in Romania’s Danube Delta. Without knowing what I did for a living, he told me he was worried about the prospects for UK wildlife tour companies because, as he put it, ‘I’ve heard that your British pension system isn’t going to be as good in the future.’ He had a point!

You will have spotted by now the link between my holiday reminiscences and the day job – it all comes down to the pensions adequacy challenge that is right at the top of the PLSA Policy team’s to-do list. If people are going to have retirements they can enjoy – whether that’s by travelling the world or whatever they want to do – then we must make sure that the DC generation builds up substantial pension pots and takes good decisions about how to use them.

This is why we were so pleased to see the announcements made by the Pensions Minister, Laura Trott, that the government would back Jonathan Gullis’ Private Member’s Bill which extends automatic enrolment to age 18 and applies it from the first pound of earnings. These are two of the reforms we advocated in our Five Steps to Better Pensions report published at last October’s Annual Conference, so it’s great to see the government endorsing them.

The Minister also got the DWP to publish its own analysis of pensions adequacy against the Pension Commission’s targets and the PLSA’s Retirement Living Standards, almost exactly as we did for our Five Steps project. The findings were pretty similar.

And while I’m reeling off some recent PLSA Policy successes, I should mention that the recent Budget increased the Money Purchase Annual Allowance –something we called for in our preBudget submission.

These wins give me encouragement that the work our Policy team does on our members’ behalf is getting traction. It all contributes in one way or another to tackling the adequacy challenge by helping people to save more and better. That’s the PLSA’s mission after all –to help people get a better income in retirement.

We have recently strengthened our Policy team so they can be an even more effective voice for our members in the corridors of power. I hope that gives us an even better prospect of ensuring people get a retirement they can enjoy –whatever form that takes. If that means the UK can continue sending well-to-do wildlife fans to Costa Rica, Romania or wherever, then even better.

And by the way, I’ve still got those photos - many hundreds in fact, including the one at the top of this page. Hummingbirds, howler monkeys, toucans and tanagers. Any Viewpoint readers who want to see them should just let me know. But be warned, there are quite a lot…