Pensions Expert’s new editor Samantha Downes shares her view on the industry this week.
Before I started to write this column I decided to Google my name. The great thing about being a writer of many decades means you can re-visit your back catalogue when inspiration is hard to find.
Not that it was this week but I felt I needed to have a peek into the past to see what regulatory issues were bothering me six years ago.
I landed on an opinion piece, written in July 2017 while I was assistant editor of a well-known adviser-focused trade publication. It reads - to my chagrin - like a rant against the Financial Conduct Authority.
The regulator, how dare it, had chosen the week the schools broke up to issue a raft of consultations, including a probe of platforms and a review of pensions freedoms.
My exasperation also landed on The Pensions Regulator, which was about to ‘tour’ the UK in a bid to help financial advisers alert more of their clients to pensions scammers, although I think that one probably was a more constructive example of UK financial regulation.
I’ve written plenty of more interesting, and informative stories since, but this one stuck out because it harks back to pre-pandemic times, business as usual.
This week the Chancellor hit the pensions industry with a raft of pre-summer holiday consultations, calls for evidence and promises of legislation. This is going to place a heavy burden on all of us, but it brings the promise of change, change for the better.
Thankfully you have Pensions Expert to cover the news and the analysis, and the fall out of this week’s Mansion House reforms.
But we need your views and your expertise too, so please get in touch. In times of change it’s never been more important to make your views heard.
