We need to defuse our pensions timebomb – The City View September 24, 2015 The current debate over Europe’s migration crisis centres on how many refugees each country “can afford to absorb”. The implication is that each person who migrates into an area brings an economic cost, and that allowing them in is an act of charity. But there are many economists who argue that this just [...]
UK pensions advice: Improve awareness, know what you’re saving and whether it’s enough September 16, 2015 Pensions awareness is a real concern for the UK and the statistics are worrying. Only 27 per cent of people say they feel “very informed” about pensions, for example, according to new research by Towers Watson. And last year, a government report discovered that 11.9m people in the UK are “saving too little”. [...]
UK pensions deficits: FTSE 100 firms fear pension pain as workers retire September 6, 2015 Pension schemes represent a “material risk” for many of the largest companies in the FTSE 100, new research shows. Six firms, including BAE Systems, British Airways-owner International Airlines Group, RSA and Royal Bank of Scotland, all have total disclosed pension liabilities almost double their equity market value, so says JLT Employee Benefits’ quarterly report [...]
Pensioners shun Lamborghini lifestyle as savers opt for sound investments September 3, 2015 Fears that savers would blow their pension pots after new freedoms were introduced have failed to materialise, according to new figures that show Brits opting for sounder investments. Savers took £2.5bn out of their pensions, about £27m a day, during three months following new rules that came into place in April. Yet, during the [...]
Fossil Fuel divestment: The feel-good climate change policy that would undermine public pension funds September 2, 2015 Most would agree that climate change could pose a threat to the economy. However, measures to combat it will ultimately prove counter-productive if they conflict with the interests of the taxpayer. Forcing government to pursue losses from taxpayer-funded investments in the name of environmentalism, for example, would be an obvious misuse of public [...]
A pensions perfect storm is brewing – but longer lives needn’t prove a nightmare August 26, 2015 An old friend recently confided that there is one thing he is afraid of more than death – and that is living too long. Longer lifespans and low interest rates can combine to make retirement a potential nightmare of penury. Public finances face a related challenge. According to IMF research, public pension expenditure [...]
UK company pension deficits could not be plugged by annual salary of every UK employee August 17, 2015 The annual salary of every employee in the UK couldn't pay off the pension deficit of its private companies which has more than tripled in the last 15 years. The combined shortfall of the UK private sector's defined benefit schemes stands at around £900bn, up from £250bn at the start of the millennium, despite millions [...]
Annuities heavyweights Just Retirement and Partnership Assurance unveil £670m merger as pension changes bite August 11, 2015 Annuities giant Just Retirement has announced it is buying Partnership Assurance in a £670m all-share merger, after massive changes to the UK's pension regime caused sales of annuities to plummet. Shares in Just Retirement rose 1.66 per cent to 202p in early trading, while Partnership's shares jumped 8.9 per cent to 168p on the announcement [...]
Pension reforms: Drawdown customers warned over scammers August 7, 2015 George Osborne's reforms to pensions, which mean people can withdraw their savings and buy, say, a Ferrari (or just shares in Lloyds Banking Group), was seen as a revolutionary move by most savers. But it seems scammers were also pretty pleased about it: now Citizens Advice has warned pensioners and pensioners-to-be to be on alert. [...]
Lloyds, GSK and Vodafone: The 10 shares pension drawdown investors are buying up August 5, 2015 Four months after pension savers were given freedoms allowing them to withdraw their savings and invest it into other areas, they have yet to spend their pension pots on those Ferraris everyone was worried about when the freedoms were first announced. Or that's according to financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown, anyway, which has listed the top [...]