12 March 2013 The NAPF has added to their list of ‘made simple’ educational guides available on their website with a new title on Fiduciary Management, written and sponsored by Russell Investments. If you have read the guide or have views on the pros and cons of fiduciary management / delegated consulting, please do leave comments below.
25 February 2013 Over the weekend, I found myself musing on the consequences of the Moody’s downgrade of UK government debt for UK pension schemes. Does it really matter: are gilts really safe, what does it mean for the cost of financing the public debt and for pension deficits. In reality, I believe that the change of credit rating by one of the three big agencies tells us next to nothing new about the safety of gilts and that the Moody’s action is likely to have an extremely limited impact on gilt yields. It will likely continue the recent weakness…
12 February 2013 The Pension Protection Fund produces a monthly index update (this month’s release has data taken as at end-January 2013) of the estimated funding position of the defined benefit schemes which would be potentially eligible for entry into the Fund. Estimated total scheme deficits once again improved during the first month of 2013, from £244.7bn as at end December 2012 to £211.2bn with a corresponding improvement in s179 funding ratio to 83.7% from 81.3%. January’s improvement was mostly due to the early year strong start to asset performance, though the effect of slightly increased gilts yields was also…
10 January 2012 The Office for National Statistics has announced the result of their review into the RPI calculation methodology. This product is used as a key reference index for UK index-linked securities and derivatives as well as being the reference for some benefit increases in defined benefit pensions entitlement. The ONS have recommended that the calculation of the RPI remain unchanged : thus protecting the status of RPI-linked pensions and financial assets : whilst acknowledging the shortcomings in the methodology by adding the new RPIJ index based on geometric averaging (which is consistent with both the CPI and generally…
8 January 2013 The Pension Protection Fund produces a monthly index update (this month’s release has data taken as at end-December 2012) of the estimated funding position of the defined benefit schemes which would be potentially eligible for entry into the Fund. Total scheme deficits fell slightly during the last month of 2012, from £252.5bn as at end November to £244.7bn at end December with a corresponding improvement in s179 funding ratio to 81.3% from 80.8%. Year on year has seen a small but not insignificant improvement in universe funding positions with the funding ratio rising from 78.9% at year…
19 December 2012 The Department of Work and Pensions has announced the results of their consultation on auto enrolment thresholds for 2013/14 (our previous article is published here). The conclusion of the consultation has agreed DWP’s approach to align the three key thresholds to the corresponding National Insurance thresholds and the earnings trigger has been adjusted to take into account changes in the PAYE threshold announced in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement.
