All articles by Stephanie Hawthorne – Page 4
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Features
Section 75: Ticking time-bomb in need of reform, say lawyers
Analysis: Experts say section 75 debts and flexible apportionment agreements, one of the most complex areas of pensions law, is crying out for change.
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News
Return of the zombies: Can trustees ‘game’ PPF?
Defined benefit trustees linked to struggling employers face tough decisions about whether to tip their sponsors into insolvency or increase their burden on the Pension Protection Fund amid the onset of a global recession, in what experts have called a regulatory grey area.
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News
Premier Foods sets up tasty scheme merger
Premier Foods, maker of Mr Kipling cakes, has reached a groundbreaking agreement to merge its RHM, Premier Foods and Premier Grocery Products pension schemes, a move that the company estimates could save it as much as £145m in contributions.
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Features
Scottish Widows hires former regulator as master trust chair
Andrew Warwick-Thompson has been at centre of the pensions industry since 1986, in a variety of top jobs including leading roles at the Pensions Regulator and in the Local Government Pension Scheme, and now clutching his first non-executive role as chair of the Scottish Widows Master Trust.
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NewsNews UK partners with Scottish Widows on pension app testing
Newspaper publisher News UK is collaborating with Scottish Widows on the testing of a new member app, as the pensions industry counts the cost of its failed attempts to boost engagement.
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News
How will DC stand up to Covid-19 pandemic?
The Covid-19 emergency is taking its toll on the defined contribution savings space, with master trusts reporting small numbers of employers missing contributions and businesses grappling with the pensions implications of furloughing and redundancies.
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News
Ombudsman’s Royal Mail decision opens up Pandora’s box
The Pensions Ombudsman has upheld a complaint against the Royal Mail Statutory Pension Scheme for refusing to pay a deferred pension, providing a salutary lesson for employers who fail to keep adequate records.
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News
Pension Ombudsman awards Police Scotland employee £2,000
Lawyers have cautioned employers to keep their members fully informed of any pension benefit changes, after the Pensions Ombudsman awarded a Police Scotland employee £2,000.
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News
HSBC ahead of curve with TCFD compliance
As the government seeks powers to mandate pension schemes to disclose their climate change risks, the HSBC Bank (UK) Pension Scheme is already on its second report under the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.
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News
LGPS returns to drop by almost half in next decade
As the world faces global meltdown and investors are set to receive lower and more volatile returns for the next decade or more, new research suggests that some local authority pension schemes may be overestimating their potential growth.
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News
Charge cap could be a barrier to CDC, experts fear
A collective defined contribution pension scheme for Royal Mail employees is inching closer to the starting gate, but an amendment to the pension schemes bill to impose a charge cap could derail other nascent CDCs from ever getting off the ground, according to experts.
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News
Blue chips rush to offload DC pension plans to master trusts
More and more blue-chip employers are looking to transfer their defined contribution pension plans to the new breed of master trusts. The Vodafone UK DC Pension Plan is the latest to move all members’ accounts, amounting to £1.4bn, into LifeSight. The transaction is expected to be finalised by the end of March 2020.
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News
Auto-enrolment process creates 'employee underclass'
Three out of four pensions professionals say employers should be free to statutorily enrol any employee they wish, even if current auto-enrolment age and earnings criteria are not met.
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News
Social care crisis: is auto-enrolment the answer?
Auto-enrolment-style contributions could hold the key to solving the UK’s growing social care crisis, according to the sponsors of a report into the funding shortfall for care in later life.
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NewsIR35 could be employment minefield
Analysis: Many employers are ill-prepared for the pensions fallout of a complex new tax fairness rule that comes into force in just six weeks’ time, experts have warned.
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News
Cracknell: Industry fails to explain ‘how’ savers can make changes
After a five-year stint as chief executive of the Pensions Advisory Service, which ended in December 2018, Michelle Cracknell started as a non-executive director at Just Group on March 1.
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Features
Hundreds of thousands of micro pots suffer remorseless attrition
Data crunch: Eight years after the auto-enrolment revolution, millions of workers’ pensions are left languishing in master trusts when they move jobs.
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News
Kent Council fund initiates revamp of its ESG policies
Kent County Council is sprucing up its responsible ownership pension policy as climate concerns become mainstream.
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News
City of Westminster scheme to cut equities and diversify portfolio
The City of Westminster Pension Fund has shifted its investment strategy in response to concerns about volatility in equity markets, added to a need to diversify risk and lock down an improved funding ratio.
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Features
Dashboard innovators ‘constrained by environment’
Paul Sturgess had the option to step back from driving innovation in administration in 2005. Having fallen into insurance and pensions at the Prudential in 1979, a career spanning a quarter of a century had seen him take part in the successful management buyout and sale of FPS, a pioneer of online automated defined contribution administration.