The Parliamentary Ombudsman (Ann Abraham) has found that:
The U.K. should compensate Equitable Life Assurance Society policyholders who lost out when the insurer almost collapsed in 2000 because the government and regulators failed to properly supervise it for a decade.
It’s odd to note that in 2003 she found when reviewing exactly the same issue:
no evidence to […]
There was an extraordinary piece of information in the Observer newspaper on Sunday. It was noted with regard to equity investors that:
Retail investors have voted with their feet. According to the Investment Management Association, more people have cashed in their Isa equities savings plans than taken out new ones in each year since 2004, despite […]
In 2003 I co-authored a paper with Colin Hines and Alan Simpson MP called People’s Pensions: New Thinking for the 21st Century. It was published by the New Economics Foundation and attracted some attention at the time. In it we argued that less than 15% of the total amount paid into pension funds was used […]
The FT reports that:
The Takeover Panel has taken the highly unusual step of giving Pension Corporation the option to withdraw from its agreed £400m bid for Telent, a communications services company, after the Pensions Regulator replaced the trustees to the target’s pension scheme with three of its own choice, who cannot be removed for six […]
According to Accountancy Age Arther Levitt, former head of the SEC in the States has said opaque accounting is putting US pension funds at risk.
He’s right.
Adopting country-by-country reporting would be one thing that would reduce the risk. After all, pensioners are real people living in real places with real interest in what is happening in […]
Another front page story of significance this morning. Ashely Seagar in the Guardian reports that City bonuses have reached £14 billion this year. He suggests that figure is spread between £1 million people in the finance industry. That’s still £14,000 each. But as the distribution is incredibly skewed towards a very few people that hides […]
Consider this parliamentary question and answer:
Alan Simpson: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what consideration was given to the potential effect of additional funds to be invested in financial markets during the production of the regulatory impact assessment for the Pensions Bill. [130774]
James Purnell: The Pensions Bill does not introduce measures […]
Yesterday I looked at problems in our current pension arrangements. Today I address the solutions.
There is a pension problem that faces everyone associated with them, and it is about time we recognised that the problem is not about now, but about the future. Put quite simply, there is no guarantee that current arrangements for […]
Most people worry about their pensions. But the issues that worry them are usually whether they have paid in enough, or whether they have chosen the best provider. It rarely occurs to them to wonder whether they will ever see the pension that they have paid for. And nor do most people ask whether the […]
