November 2019

13Nov

UK. Ex-charity head admits defrauding disabled workers’ pension scheme

The former head of a charity faces a substantial prison sentence after admitting to defrauding a pension scheme for workers with disabilities and using the money to buy houses in England and France. Patrick McLarry, 71, took more than £250,000 from the pension scheme of Yateley Industries for the Disabled and used it to buy homes for himself and his wife and pay off a debt over a pub lease. The Pensions Regulator (TPR), which brought the prosecution, said...

November 13, 2019
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08Nov

Sharpening the Teeth of EU Social Fundamental Rights? The Case of State Pension Age in the UK

By Hans van Meerten In this contribution I want to discuss an important and very topical EU Law element of the judgment regarding two claimants (Delve and Glynn), backed by BackTo60, versus the UK Department of Work and Pensions (hereafter: Delve and Glynn). Claimants argued inter alia that the UK State Pension Age (SPA)was discriminatory. I want to focus here not if SPA is discriminatory, but whether the (SPA) falls in the ambit of EU law. Didn’t the UK...

November 8, 2019
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04Nov

UK. NHS misses deadline for staff pension statements

The NHS missed its three-month deadline for issuing pension statements to more than 4,000 staff this year as the service struggles to cope with requests from doctors worried about tax bills. Between January and September, the NHS pension scheme received 15,200 requests from hospital consultants for an annual allowance statement, which is needed to assess their tax position. But one in four of those requests — or 3,824 — were not completed within the target timeframe, according to a...

November 4, 2019
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04Nov

Stewardship in the UK – The 2019 Draft Stewardship Code in Context

By Eva Micheler (London School of Economics - Law Department) The article interrogates the idea of creating a market for stewardship and identifies obstacles that stand in the way of such a market. In particular tax relief for pension investments deprives pension investors from an incentive to monitor investment and demand stewardship activity by their service providers. By granting tax relief the government has become a financial contributor to and a stakeholder in the financial services industry that services pensions....

November 4, 2019
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October 2019

31Oct

UK. Delivering pension dashboards

The inclusion of the pension dashboards among the announcements in the Queen’s Speech on October 14 was an important step forward for this initiative, reflecting support from the government and enabling the industry to move forward to deliver dashboards with renewed vigour and certainty. Read also UK. Retirement income gender gap is the biggest in a decade While it has been pointed out that a lack of government majority in parliament means the proposals contained in the pensions bill might...

October 31, 2019
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30Oct

UK. The worst pensions firms for transfers that take up to 62 days to release cash

Meanwhile, the quickest time is offered by Aviva at just 12 days, according to research. Consolidator service PensionBee analysed almost 52,000 transfers by customers who joined the firm since 2016, with the sample size for each provider ranging from 141 to 7,914 cases. It found that apart from Mercer, the slowest pension providers were Now Pensions, taking an average of 61 days, while Capita took 45, Willis Towers Watson took 42, and Smart Pension took 36. Overall, the average...

October 30, 2019
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28Oct

UK. Retirement income gender gap is the biggest in a decade

At first glance, the latest numbers suggest we’re all finally winning the battle for a comfortable old age. Official figures out this week from the Department for Work and Pensions and the Pension Regulator show equal numbers of men and women are now saving into a workplace pension. Even the number of employees asking to join who don’t automatically qualify – often women in part-time roles who don’t earn enough – has increased dramatically. Commenting on the figures, Guy...

October 28, 2019
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28Oct

UK. MPs call for end to freeze on State pension for half a million expats living outside of Europe

Pension payments to British expats living in Europe will rise in line with inflation But the same does not apply to payments for pensioners living further afield More than 40 MPs are calling on the Government to overturn the move More than 40 MPs are calling on the Government to overturn an enduring injustice affecting State pension payments to half a million UK nationals living overseas. The cross-party group is sending an open letter to Therese Coffey, the Secretary...

October 28, 2019
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25Oct

UK. Watchdog hails success of auto-enrolment pensions

Regulators and financial experts are hailing a rare public policy success after figures on Britain’s “auto-enrolment” scheme revealed 10 million more people are now saving, with record amounts going into pensions. British workers saved £90.4bn into their pension schemes in 2018, according to the Pensions Regulator – £7bn more than the year before. Behind the surge in saving is auto-enrolment, the scheme set up by the government in 2012 to make sure everyone, whether they work for a supermarket...

October 25, 2019
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23Oct

UK. British pensioners in Europe struggle to make ends meet, committee told

Retired Britons in Europe are not sipping prosecco on a warm terrace but are struggling to make ends meet and fear further poverty because of Brexit, a parliamentary committee has been told. Jeremy Morgan QC said retirees in the EU living exclusively or almost exclusively on British pensions have already suffered a decrease in their income because of the depreciation in sterling since the referendum. They were hit by a second blow last month when the government revealed it...

October 23, 2019
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