Pension stuff, how's it all looking ? HAve you prepared ?

[Yambo]

I don't think he was actually being serious fella....

I didn't think I was either.

I try not to overuse smilies but I suppose one might have been appropriate.

[JackyJoll]

Well unless the pension collapses, I know some people in Carillion who had massive pensions and I think they lost loads.

I left the atomic privatisation triumph that was AEAT PLC in 2001.

Their pension scheme collapsed in 2012. It was rescued by a Govt scheme for such things, but everyone’s pension was reduced and some people ended up with most of their income not index-linked.

[Mr. Dazzle]

I got into the habit of putting a slice of any pay rise into my company pension a while ago. It means I never get used to having all the extra money, my pension contributions increase from the very first bigger paycheck.

I think I'm up to about 15% voluntary contributions now.

And if your employer matches it or at least puts a big chunk in then you’ll be laughing.

Well unless the pension collapses, I know some people in Carillion who had massive pensions and I think they lost loads.

My employer doesn't match it, but they do put in a decent chunk more than the legal minimum. I also get a small extra bonus because they give me some of the NI back as well - it's a salary sacrifice scheme, so they don't pay employer's NI on my pension contributions, they give me 25% of their savings on that.

It's a SIPP, not invested in a company scheme, so once the money comes to me they're no longer involved.

[Mr. Dazzle]

I've only ever had one pension where the money was in a company scheme - I've still got it in fact, my Rolls-Royce final salary scheme from my first "real" job. It's worth the grand total of 2.5 forty fifths of a pension based on my final salary of £29k Think it comes to about £700pa

Everything else I've consolidated into a single SIPP which is also the one my current bunch pay into every month.

Even if the firm managing the pension went tits up it shouldn't matter (he says ) because they don't actually have my money, said money is spread across loads of different investments (which of course, I own) which they merely manage on my behalf.

I'd need about 100 different companies to go tits up simultaneously to lose it all. Fingers crossed

[mangocrazy]

My company pension from 1974 to 1989 was invested with Equitable Life.

That ended well...

[Count Steer]

My company pension from 1974 to 1989 was invested with Equitable Life.

That ended well...

I know a couple of people in that situation too. I think one of them, having been self-employed for a long time had just about all of her pot with them.

No government bail-outs there.

Just goes to show that things that shouldn't/don't happen, actually sometimes do. Hard to plan for other than spread stuff around a bit.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Hard to plan for other than spread stuff around a bit.

That is investment knowledge 102 of course

101 being "the value can go down as well as up"

[JackyJoll]

My company pension from 1974 to 1989 was invested with Equitable Life.

That ended well...

Bloody hell!

The Coalition Government then passed the Equitable Life (Payments) Act 2010, establishing a £1.5 billion compensation scheme for affected policyholders. This was significantly less than the £4 – £5 billion which was requested by the Equitable Members Action Group (EMAG), which was set up to campaign for compensation for policyholders. The Government estimated total losses at £4.1 billion.
The compensation scheme amount of £1.5 billion covers around a third of the total amount claimed. EMAG claims that because the Government agreed to completely cover the losses of those who were already receiving annuities, the vast majority of those affected received only 22% of the money they had lost. The Government has repeated on numerous occasions since the compensation scheme closed at the end of 2015 that it does not intend to make any further payments.

[mangocrazy]

My company pension from 1974 to 1989 was invested with Equitable Life.

That ended well...

Bloody hell!

The Coalition Government then passed the Equitable Life (Payments) Act 2010, establishing a £1.5 billion compensation scheme for affected policyholders. This was significantly less than the £4 – £5 billion which was requested by the Equitable Members Action Group (EMAG), which was set up to campaign for compensation for policyholders. The Government estimated total losses at £4.1 billion.
The compensation scheme amount of £1.5 billion covers around a third of the total amount claimed. EMAG claims that because the Government agreed to completely cover the losses of those who were already receiving annuities, the vast majority of those affected received only 22% of the money they had lost. The Government has repeated on numerous occasions since the compensation scheme closed at the end of 2015 that it does not intend to make any further payments.

Yes, that's about the scale of the payback we received - less than a quarter of the original pot value. That's one of the reasons I had to carry on working until I was 70.

But I'm not bitter...

[Count Steer]

Ah. There was a bit of a bail out. That 22% fits with what our friend ended up with. Fortunately she had a house in Twickenham and could sell up and move (back to her roots) on The Wirrall and convert some bricks to £.

In a coincidental fashion I did a training course run by a chap called Vincent Nolan. Next time I saw that name he was chair of EMAG.

[mangocrazy]

I've never fully understood why and how Equitable Life went down the pan, but by the scale of it I'd hazard a guess that there was an element of fraud involved and not just bad management.

[Count Steer]

I've never fully understood why and how Equitable Life went down the pan, but by the scale of it I'd hazard a guess that there was an element of fraud involved and not just bad management.

They issued 'policies' with contractually guaranteed, unsustainable returns/benefits if certain market conditions pertained, which they did. The cost of meeting their obligations drained them of £.

They asked those holding them to take a bit of a hit ie less than they had every right to expect. That would have enabled them to spread the pain but survive. The holders said 'foxtrot oscar' and bought the whole house of cards down, but, as I understand it got paid while the others got stiffed. It wasn't fraud it was incompetent drafting of product terms.

That's my understanding anyway. Turned out to be not such an equitable life Henry.

[mangocrazy]

OK, so it looked like a bit of a Ponzi scheme, but was in fact just sloppy management (or management who didn't understand the implications of their actions).

[Count Steer]

OK, so it looked like a bit of a Ponzi scheme, but was in fact just sloppy management (or management who didn't understand the implications of their actions).

Yup. The first para of the Wiki sums it up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Equit ... r%2Dfunded.

I suspect word got around about the rather good terms and a lot of people piled in to EL...but not necessarily into the scheme that caused the problem (or the terms were changed, dunno). Some probably just did a bit of market research and EL kept coming up as

(One of the missus' colleagues was in that boat too apparently).

[mangocrazy]

He'd spent his whole life seeing interest rates of about 5% at least, to the point that it was about as guaranteed as it could get, it was unthinkable that interest might drop to zero.

Yes, quite. It makes me laugh when people go on about 4 or 5% as being sky-high interest rates. Zero interest rates for as long as they were made people think it was the new normal. It wasn't - it was an aberration. When I bought my first house interest rates briefly hit 17% as I recall.

[Count Steer]

Well unless the pension collapses, I know some people in Carillion who had massive pensions and I think they lost loads.

I left the atomic privatisation triumph that was AEAT PLC in 2001.

Their pension scheme collapsed in 2012. It was rescued by a Govt scheme for such things, but everyone’s pension was reduced and some people ended up with most of their income not index-linked.

Just happened across an article about this. It's doubly galling that the Pension Protection Fund doesn't pay out in full because it was the Government that sold/privatised AEAT (£224M) while promising "pension rights will be fully protected". AEAT goes bust within 4 years and is sold (without the pension liability) to Ricardo. Pension fund ends up with PPF.

So, government doesn't meet the promises it makes and leaves a pension fund with a £75M shortfall in the interest of making a quick buck in 1996. The National Audit Office were less than complimentary earlier this year. They do say staff received "incomplete information from government" which seems a polite way of saying "lied through their teeth".

Needs a TV series starring Toby Jones.

[JackyJoll]

Well unless the pension collapses, I know some people in Carillion who had massive pensions and I think they lost loads.

I left the atomic privatisation triumph that was AEAT PLC in 2001.

Their pension scheme collapsed in 2012. It was rescued by a Govt scheme for such things, but everyone’s pension was reduced and some people ended up with most of their income not index-linked.

Just happened across an article about this. It's doubly galling that the Pension Protection Fund doesn't pay out in full because it was the Government that sold/privatised AEAT (£224M) while promising "pension rights will be fully protected". AEAT goes bust within 4 years and is sold (without the pension liability) to Ricardo. Pension fund ends up with PPF.

So, government doesn't meet the promises it makes and leaves a pension fund with a £75M shortfall in the interest of making a quick buck in 1996. The National Audit Office were less than complimentary earlier this year. They do say staff received "incomplete information from government" which seems a polite way of saying "lied through their teeth".

Needs a TV series starring Toby Jones.

There are more spectacular cases out there, to make documentaries about, such as the con-men descending on steel towns to talk people out of their pension.

[weeksy]

I'm not sure how all this works, but in the last 4 months mine has gone up be nearly £40,000. Whatever plan i'm on, i'll stick with it.

[ZRX61]

My pittance just lost over half the gains of the past 6 months.

[Count Steer]

I left the atomic privatisation triumph that was AEAT PLC in 2001.

Their pension scheme collapsed in 2012. It was rescued by a Govt scheme for such things, but everyone’s pension was reduced and some people ended up with most of their income not index-linked.

Just happened across an article about this. It's doubly galling that the Pension Protection Fund doesn't pay out in full because it was the Government that sold/privatised AEAT (£224M) while promising "pension rights will be fully protected". AEAT goes bust within 4 years and is sold (without the pension liability) to Ricardo. Pension fund ends up with PPF.

So, government doesn't meet the promises it makes and leaves a pension fund with a £75M shortfall in the interest of making a quick buck in 1996. The National Audit Office were less than complimentary earlier this year. They do say staff received "incomplete information from government" which seems a polite way of saying "lied through their teeth".

Needs a TV series starring Toby Jones.

There are more spectacular cases out there, to make documentaries about, such as the con-men descending on steel towns to talk people out of their pension.

That was pretty despicable. Dunno what you can do about it apart from lock down the scheme for a cooling off period and use the time to wise people up.

(I know some people that transferred out of a gold-plated final salary scheme but most were just greedy and keen to believe the salesmen. One of them even bragged about it and called the rest of us muppets. I think he ended up going through the 'I was missold a pension' route to seek redress. The AEAT staff were encouraged/reassured by their own Government to transfer! - which is a bit different).

The article says 90% of the pension members agreed to transfer to the private pension following assurances from the Government. I wondered what the other 10% did?