A wish list for Christmas pensions. What you said…

Professional pensions asked its Pension Buzz respondents to choose which topic or topic to include on a pension-themed Christmas wishlist this year. Here are the responses we received …

Politics

• A timeline for implementing the recommendations of the 2017 Automatic Enrollment (AE) Examination.
• The idea of ​​the retirement “statement season” will be abandoned
• Accounting standards amended to remove pension assets and liabilities from company accounts
• A freeze on new consultations until the implementation of the changes compared to those issued in 2020 and 2021
• A pair of scissors to cut unnecessary paperwork
• A life commission later

Pension dashboards

• More clarity around dashboards
• Pension dashboards to be canceled

Legislation and regulations

• A break from any new legislation
• Revision of winding-up rules to make it easier for plans to secure their commitments
• A gradual increase in minimum employer contributions
• The end of political gossip
• A reversal of retirement freedoms
• Less regulation, bureaucracy and government intervention
• EI premium rate increase
• Increase in minimum EI contributions
• Less regulation and checkboxes
• No change from official bodies or regulators for five years
• Reverse the reform of the retail price index
• Remove the rules for “own risk assessment”
• Reduce excessive periods
• Do more to prevent scams
• Better rationalize pension legislation

Investment / economy

• Management fees capped at ten basis points
• Pandemic Inflation Retreat
• New investment options adapted to the requirements of pension plans in terms of income, ESG and climate change
• Real positive returns
• Stable markets and low inflation
• Grants that are still going up

Stewardship

• Long-term stewardship and sustainability are unambiguously defined as fiduciary duties

Tax

• Simplification of the pension tax
• Abolition of the annual allowance (AA)
• An increase in the lifetime allowance
• Tax simplification so that plans can focus on members rather than bureaucracy and compliance
• Increase AA

State pension

• That the government pay a decent state pension
• The triple lock is retained
• Private pensions abolished and decent state pension benefits provided to all

Defined benefits

• The end of forced disclosure of documents for closed defined benefit (DB) plans
• So that the DB funding code does not “penalize” immature open plans with strong covenants
• A better way to value liabilities
• More pressure on sponsors to make meaningful contributions to debt reduction

Data

• A data cleansing wizard
• Clean data

Commitment

• Better understanding of pensions by participants
• Significant communication greeted with enthusiasm by all
• A magic button that engages employees with pensions

BPF

• A magic wand to make BPF disappear
• A turnaround on the requirement to equalize historical transfer values
• Get rid of the GMP equalizer
• Speed ​​up GMP equalization
• Introduce a simpler approach to GMP conversion
• GMP equalization to go

ESG

• That the rules of the working group on climate-related financial disclosures do not oblige investment managers and companies to change their behavior

Pensions Buzz is conducted weekly to collect anonymously Professional Pensions readers’ opinions on top news and trends. Respondents include actuaries, trustees, investment managers, lawyers, pension plan administrators and consultants. We’re back in 2022, starting January 17th.

To participate, send an email to our research team here.