"Where next for Pension Policy?" TUC GS Frances O'Grady & Minister Steve Webb

TUC National Officer (and NEST trustee) Nigel Stanley opened the meeting.

The new TUC General Secretary, Frances O'Grady spoke first. She told us that this generation will be the first to be poorer than their parents. Things are very tough and while there is some genuine good news on auto enrolment (AE) and the state pension. We need to change the failed "market approach" economy of the last 3 decades.

While the TUC supports the general direction of travel, the starting point should be the overwhelming case for an increase in higher AE pension contributions.  We need a cap on Defined Contributions (DC) charges of 0.7% pa,  trust based governance and we must tackle systemic pension inequality. Why are top company directors paid 23% of income into their DC pensions while their workers only get 6.6%? This is profoundly wrong. Why are so many low paid workers excluded from AE?

We need employee representation on company remuneration committees to bring about some common sense on these boards.

Finally, why do higher rate tax payers take such a disproportionate amount of relief compared to basic taxpayers. Is this fair? 

Next was key note speaker, Pension Minister, Steve Webb MP.

Steve welcomed the broad support of the TUC on many of his measures. He is very proud that 2 million workers have been auto enrolled into their pensions schemes with scarcely any controversy.

He is concerned that many low paid workers are excluded but he doesn't think it is worth them paying 10p per week into a pension. It's not that they "don't give a damn" about the low paid and women.

Steve attacked the media for their coverage of his Defined Ambition (DA) and Collective Defined Contributions (CDC) proposals. The Telegraph accused him of "stealing" the indexation of pensions. He could have done nothing about Defined Benefit pensions and just watch them die. How can conditionality of benefits be worse than having no indexation at all? At the moment with DC all the risk is on the employee. What is wrong with risk sharing?

The DC collective model is illegal in British Law. Why can't we look at the Danish model where each year some of your pension is guaranteed? While guarantees have costs they are attractive to some.

He is consulting on charges and realises that he has to protect the majority who have been auto-enrolled that have never made an active choice on their funds.

He pointed out that despite the huge rise in life expectancy, the male  state retirement age is the same as a century ago. This is just unsustainable.

My question to Steve was what advise should we be giving low paid workers who when they retire depend on private renting. Many UNISON members are low paid and more of them rent in the private sector than from social landlords. I met recently a pensioner who is totally dependent on pension credit who has to pay £150 per week for a bedsit above a Chicken shop in West Ham. This man had been on low wages all his life but if he was in a pension scheme he would have had to save at least £100,000 lump sum just to get an annuity to pay off his rent.

What this means is that under AE the low paid who have to privately rent may be paying into a scheme that they will never benefit from? This is a future mis-selling scandal. What we need to do is of course increase real pay and reduce rents but... in the meanwhile?

Steve accepted that this is a problem and the decline in owner occupation has increased pensioner poverty but thinks that the housing benefit taper will still make it better for low paid workers to pay into AE, since the employer matches contributions pound for pound.

(after this we had coffee and then workshops. I will post next on the "Stewardship - taking action" workshop)

Our Money, Our Business: Building a more accountable investment system

Yesterday evening I went to the launch of two new reports by ShareAction at the Nuffield Foundation in central London. Chaired by their CEO, Catherine Howarth.

Christine Berry from ShareAction presented on the reports "Our Money, Our Business: Building a more accountable  investment system" and "Engaging savers with stewardship and responsible investment".

Christine argued that in light of pension auto enrolment we need to revisit ideas such as those expressed in the book by David Pitt-Watson, "The New Capitalists", since there will now be a huge expansion of share owners. However, at the moment share owner governance is a "dead duck" and we need to reassert the legitimacy of shareholders as owners. We also need to counter the idea that no one is really interested in what happens to their savings.

Research by the Pension Trust (whose chair Sarah Smart was sitting in the same row as me) suggested that its members were not that interested in whether their fund was invested in the traditional "sin stocks" (such as tobacco) but were interested in environmental issues and labour rights.

The first speaker was Mark Fawcett from NEST who pointed out that in modern day Direct Contribution (DC) schemes, savers are exposed to all the risk then it is likely that members will have to take a more active interest in their savings (whether they like it or not).

Roger Urwin from advisers, Towers Watson, was concerned that the reports were important but maybe heavy on aspiration and light on what could be catalysts to bring about change.

Charlotte Black, from high net worth private investor manager, Brewin Dolphin, thought this was an important issue and could show the good side of capitalism but her 120,000 investors had never used the proxy share voting system she had put in place.

My question to the panel was that we need to have better and stronger representative democracy by a elected trustee based model. Advisers are very important but they do not have the fiduciary duty or mandate that elected member nominated trustees will have. Saying that, trustees do have to raise their game and become better trained and more assertive but they do need support.

(good luck to Christine who is soon leaving ShareAction for a new job.)

another busy day for pensions...but is it a good day for future pensioners?

The government today published its white paper on a new "flat rate" state pension for 2017 currently valued at £144 per week. While this is an improvement on the current £107 per week it is expected that in the long term (2060) most pensioners will lose out.

UNISON reminds everyone that £144 is still below the poverty line and Labour Shadow Pension Minister, Gregg McClymont, points out that there will 16 million pensioners in 2017 who will not benefit from the changes and many "Strivers" will be paying extra in National Insurance Contributions.

What has struck me the most about this proposal is the claims that this increase in basic pension will take many people out of means tested benefits so that they will have the incentive to save for their futures under the new pension auto enrolment regulations.

I'm not too sure. Firstly, many low paid are being excluded from auto enrolment. You will have to earn more than £8,105 per year.

Also contributions from employees (3%) and employers (4%) are also just far too low to build up a decent pension and keep the low paid out of dependency upon means tested benefits. In high rent areas if you retire then you are still likely to be on housing benefit and the disincentive to save continues.

But the biggest issue I think is that defined contribution schemes are just plain inadequate. Even relatively good and inexpensive ones like NEST.

Now maths is not my strongest point and this is very much a back of a fag packet calculation. But I have used the NEST pension calculation website to estimate what a male 22 year old on National Minimum Wage (£6.19 per hour 40 hours a week, £12,875 per year) would get if he retired aged 68 after 46 years of defined contribution contributions.

He would receive a pension worth only £1,990 per year (£38 per week) and a lump sum of £22,600. (This is for a pension guaranteed for 10 years after retirement, with spouse pension and pension rises in line with inflation). These figures are subject to stock market performance, annuity rates and not guaranteed.

If he was in a traditional defined benefit 1/80th scheme he would get at least £6,437 per year (£123 per week) and a lump sum of £38,625. He would also get life insurance and ill-health cover. He and his employer would of course have to pay more but the pension would be guaranteed.

Question: So how will you attract the low paid to save for 46 years when they can only expect (fingers crossed) to get a pension worth £38 per week?
Answer: You can't. They are not stupid, they won't do it. Get rid of low pay. Turn a minimum wage into a living wage and auto enrol all workers into a decent defined benefit scheme. Job done. 

"Can pension funds shape the future of capitalism?"

Catching up on things. Last month I went straight from the TUC Trustee Pension Conference to the Fair Pension's Guest Lecture at the House of Commons. This was the second presentation I had been to that day on "Capitalism and pensions". I was with a notoriously quiet and reserved UNISON colleague who is a Local Government Pension (LGPS) expert. The lecture was given by Professor Keith Ambachtsheer, Director of the Rotman Institute for Pension Management (left of picture).

He was introduced by John Cruddas MP who is the Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Committee for Responsible Investment. The meeting was Chaired by Catherine Howarth of Fair Pensions.

You can read an account of his speech (and that of Mark Fawcett, Chief Investment Officer at NEST - right of picture) and the full text here. My take on Ambachtsheer is that he believes that Capitalism must be transformed by those who invest in pensions acting as active owners and demanding that capitalism is transformed into a sustainable and wealth creating model. Rather than mainly benefiting "agents" and being subject to their whims.

What I also found striking in his speech was that the traditional argument over pensions about which is best: Defined Benefit or Defined Contribution? Is the wrong question to ask. Instead you should be more concerned with Scale (size of fund), Governance, Investment belief and Fees.  I asked a question about the Local Government Pensions Scheme (LGPS) which has around £140 billion in assets but is split into 101 different funds. Ambachtsheer thought this was just completely wrong to have so many small funds.

Afterwards we went to the St Stephens Tavern where we had some very "interesting" conversations about the future of the LGPS from across the political divide.

Auto-enrolled into funding the Tories?

There is a welcome "revolution" in pensions about to hit Britain pretty soon.  In 2012 there will be at long last be a national trust based low cost pension scheme aimed at low to moderate earners and their employers (NEST). 

This is a massive advance that could eventually even help eliminate pensioner poverty in this country. 

But there could be a problem.  Trust will be a huge issue to ensure that this scheme is a success.    NEST is currently advertising for fund managers to bid to run these funds.

Now, there is a certain major international fund manager called Fidelity who may be considering whether or not to tender for one of NEST's funds.

Not that you would evcr know from their literature but Fidelity is also one of the biggest financial supporters of the Conservative Party.  Check out here, here and here. They have poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into the Tories in recent years (£495k in 2004-2008).  This is money made from small savers and pension policy holders who would not a clue that the profits from managing their money were being used to fund the Tories.

If Fidelity was chosen as a NEST fund manager then we could find that workers are being auto enrolled by law into paying policy fees to a company that has been a major paymaster of the Conservative Party. 

This is plain wrong.