Popular News
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Industry urged to probe pensioner spending habits
Pension providers have been urged to find out more about post-retirement spending as new research suggests homeowners’ and renters’ drawdown habits are very different.
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Single pensioners need £225K more for ‘moderate’ retirement
Single pensioners need £225,000 more in their pension pot than couples to achieve a ‘moderate’ standard of living in retirement.
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DC savers warned of 20% hit from Trump’s tariffs
Donald Trump’s tariffs could hit UK pensions, with DC savers warned they may experience a 20% cut in their retirement income.
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Number of appointed reps continues to fall
The number of appointed representatives continued to fall in 2024/25, according to the latest data from the Financial Conduct Authority.
Latest Blog
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James Jones-Tinsley: Aiming for an advice-guidance sweetspot
As Nikhil Rathi is reappointed as CEO of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for another five years, the FCA has set out its strategic direction for 2025/26, with important implications for financial advisers.
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Lisa Webster: Over-taxation of pensions remains an issue
HMRC’s January pension schemes newsletter announced changes to tax codes for pensions, and a few headlines followed proclaiming HMRC had finally fixed the over-taxation issue. It would be fantastic if that was the case, but despite nearly 10 years of getting it wrong, the problem isn’t resolved yet.
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Lisa Webster: Divorce impact on lump sums raises question
The lifetime allowance may have been consigned to the annals of history but the various forms of protection are still relevant in the new world, especially when it comes to the amount of pension commencement lump sum (PCLS) that can be taken.
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Martin Tilley: How education can tackle pension scams
The dark reality of pension scams is that we don’t really know how common they are. Fraud is a crime which tends to have low reporting events and with pension scams, it’s no different. The emotional toll can be as large as the financial, with some people being too embarrassed to report that they have been the victim of a scam.
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Lisa Webster: Maximising protected tax-free cash
While 2024 ended with a lot of doom and gloom in the pension world following the big announcement on inheritance tax (IHT), there was some good news that may have slipped under the radar of some advisers.
Pension savers are more likely to have a pension than 10 years ago but more are expecting to retire later than their parents’ generation.
The director of a company acting as a trustee for 16 pension schemes has received a £10,000 court fine for failing to hand information to The Pensions Regulator.
A record 77% of UK employees were in a workplace pension in 2019, according to latest ONS figures released today.
This compares to only 47% in 2012 when auto-enrolment began and is the highest membership rate for workplace pensions since 1997.
ONS says participation in occupational defined contribution (DC) pensions has grown in recent years to the extent that more employees have a DC pension than other type.
The youngest employees, those aged 22 to 29 years, have seen the most growth in workplace pension membership since 2012, rising from 31% of younger workers enrolled to 80% in 2019.
ONS says that in 2019, the gender gap in public sector pension membership disappeared. In the private sector a gap still persists with more men (77%) having a workplace pension than women (69%).
In 2019, some 78% of employees with DC pensions contributed at least 3% of earnings, up from 37% in 2018. ONS says this is likely mainly due to minimum auto-enrolment contributions rising.
Eleanor Levy, director of Marketing and Communications at NOW: Pensions, said: “It’s fantastic to see that 77% of UK employees are members of a workplace pension scheme, and auto enrolment is at its highest membership rate ever. However, more still needs to be done to ensure that everyone has the ability to save for a successful retirement.
“While DWP’s pledge to lower the auto enrolment age to 18 is a great start, we must ensure that we maintain this momentum and scrap the £10,000 auto enrolment eligibility criteria which is penalising those who simply don’t earn enough. This criteria disproportionately affects women who work part-time while they care for the younger and older generations.
“We are very supportive of Baroness Jeannie Drake’s family carer top-up, which will help approximately three million women, in addition to 300,000 men, to top up their pension savings whilst taking time out of work to be carers.”
Selftrade, one of the oldest retail investment platforms, has re-branded as EQi and announced plans to boost its SIPP services
Men and women are over-estimating how many years they will live, according to a new study.
Wealth manager St James’s Place saw profits slump in 2019 after a “challenging year” for the wealth management sector.