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Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Work and Pensions Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215056979
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 64
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Book Description
The introduction of auto-enrolment makes rigorous pension scheme governance essential. This Report calls on the Government to reassess the case for establishing one body with sole responsibility for regulating workplace pensions. There are concerns over current gaps in regulation and the potential for further gaps to arise as a result of now having three regulators, the Pensions Regulator; and the new Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority, set up to replace the FSA. The Report argues that a single regulator is necessary to ensure that all members of workplace pension schemes are adequately and consistently protected. It also highlights that deferred-member charges and member-borne consultancy charges have the potential to cause serious consumer detriment. It recommends that both are banned by the Government, if significant progress is not made in the very near future by the industry towards ending them. There is particular concern about member-borne consultancy charges and those charges applied to deferred members - people who stop contributing to their pension scheme. The trend towards lower pension scheme charges is welcome. However, a good average is not sufficient and there is potential for consumer detriment in schemes that persist in retaining high charges. The Government should also regularly review its policy on capping charges for auto-enrolment schemes. Consumers are also continuing to lose out when they buy annuities because pension providers are not doing enough to ensure people are aware that they can shop around for the best annuity rate rather than being obliged to buy an annuity from their pension provider.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Work and Pensions Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215056979
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 64
Get Book Here
Book Description
The introduction of auto-enrolment makes rigorous pension scheme governance essential. This Report calls on the Government to reassess the case for establishing one body with sole responsibility for regulating workplace pensions. There are concerns over current gaps in regulation and the potential for further gaps to arise as a result of now having three regulators, the Pensions Regulator; and the new Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority, set up to replace the FSA. The Report argues that a single regulator is necessary to ensure that all members of workplace pension schemes are adequately and consistently protected. It also highlights that deferred-member charges and member-borne consultancy charges have the potential to cause serious consumer detriment. It recommends that both are banned by the Government, if significant progress is not made in the very near future by the industry towards ending them. There is particular concern about member-borne consultancy charges and those charges applied to deferred members - people who stop contributing to their pension scheme. The trend towards lower pension scheme charges is welcome. However, a good average is not sufficient and there is potential for consumer detriment in schemes that persist in retaining high charges. The Government should also regularly review its policy on capping charges for auto-enrolment schemes. Consumers are also continuing to lose out when they buy annuities because pension providers are not doing enough to ensure people are aware that they can shop around for the best annuity rate rather than being obliged to buy an annuity from their pension provider.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Work and Pensions Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215054128
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Author: Charles Sutcliffe
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349948632
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 325
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Book Description
Occupational pensions are major participants in global financial markets with assets of well over $30 trillion, representing more than 40% of the assets of institutional investors. Some occupational pension funds control assets of over $400 billion, and the largest 300 occupational pension funds each have average assets of over $50 billion. The assets of UK pension funds are equivalent to UK GDP, and US pension fund assets are 83% of US GDP. These statistics highlight the importance of pension funds as major players in financial markets, and the need to understand the behaviour of these large institutional investors. Occupational pensions also play an important, but neglected, role in corporate finance. For example, US company pension schemes account for over 60% of company market value, and yet they are often ignored when analysing companies. This book is based on the substantial body of evidence available from around the world on a topic that has become increasingly important and controversial in recent years. Written for practitioners, students and academics, this book brings together and systematizes a very large international literature from financial economists, actuaries, practitioners, professional organizations, official documents and reports. The underlying focus is the application of the principles of financial economics to occupational pensions, including the work of Nobel laureates such as Merton, Markowitz, Modigliani, Miller and Sharpe, as well as Black. This book will give readers an up-to-date understanding of occupational pensions, the economic issues they face, and some suggestions of how these issues can be tackled. The first section explains the operation of defined benefit and defined contribution pensions, along with some descriptive statistics. The second section covers selected aspects of occupational pensions. The focus of these first two sections is on the economic and financial aspects of pensions, accompanied by some basic information on how they operate. This is followed by three further sections that analyse the investment of pension funds, the corporate finance implications of firms providing pensions for their employees, and annuities.
Author: Anke Hassel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000710998
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
The Political Economy of Pension Financialisation addresses – for numerous countries – how and why pension reforms have come to rely more on financial markets, how public policy reacted to financial crises, and regulatory variation. The book demonstrates how the process of pension financialisation reveals that pension policy is not only a social policy that affects retirement income, but also a financial policy that impacts savings rates, corporate finance and the economy. The chapters shed light on pre-funded private pensions as one key component of financialisation, as they turn savings into investments via financial services providers. Readers will also see how pension financialisation and the broader financialisation of the economy are here to stay, despite negative developments during and after the financial crisis. A systematic and comparative overwiew of the financialisation of pensions, The Political Economy of Pension Financialisation is ideal for scholars and postgradues working on Political Economy, Public Policy and Finance. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Work and Pensions Committee
Publisher: Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215057600
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
The Work Programme has the potential to work well for relatively mainstream jobseekers but is unlikely to reach the most disadvantaged long-term unemployed people. The Government spent some £248 million less on the Work Programme than anticipated in 2012/13, due to providers' under-performance in a "payment-by-results" programme. In the short term, the Committee urges the Government to use the unspent Work Programme budget to: extend proven, alternative provision for disadvantaged jobseekers, such as the Work Choice programme for disabled people; extend and continue to promote Access to Work to help disabled people overcome the practical difficulties of starting a job; and provide further support for individuals who complete their two-year attachment to the Work Programme without finding sustained employment. The Committee also highlights that people with the severest barriers to work, such as homelessness and serious drug and alcohol problems are often not ready for the Work Programme and need support first to prepare for it. It recommends that DWP pilots ways of providing this additional support to prepare these groups for effective engagement with the Work Programme before they are referred. In the longer-term, the Committee calls on DWP to consider moving away from the current differential pricing model, which is based on the type of benefit a participant is claiming, to a much more individualised, needs-based model. The Report recommends that DWP should assess how a needs-based pricing structure could determine the appropriate level of up-front funding and the types of services required to support individual jobseekers.
Author: Great Britain: Law Commission
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780108512728
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
The consultation paper Fiduciary Duties of Investments Intermediaries: A Consultation Paper follows on from the Kay Report on UK Equity Markets and Long Term Decision Making (see below), and uses pensions as the example, tracing a chain of intermediaries from the prospective pensioner/saver to the registered shareholder of a UK company. There are well established duties on pension trustees to act in the best interests of scheme members, and it looks at how far these duties require trustees to maximize financial return over a short time scale, and how far trustees can consider other factors such as environmental and social impact. The consultation asks: Whether the law is right to allow trustees to consider ethical issues only in limited circumstances? Whether the legal obligations on trustees are conducive to investment strategies in the best interests of the ultimate beneficiaries? and if not, what specifically ne
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Work and Pensions Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215055552
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
This report welcomes the improvements in retirement income that the new Single-tier State Pension will bring. However, the key to the policy's successful implementation lies in the Government informing the public as soon as possible about how it will affect individuals. The Committee criticises the Government for hampering its scrutiny of the proposals. The Government not only imposed an extremely tight timetable, but brought forward the implementation date by a year, after the Committee had completed taking evidence. The Committee says that the Government must work with them to ensure the transition is as smooth as possible and that Defined Benefit pension schemes do not suffer as a result. The Government should also develop and publish a clear explanation of how means-tested support, including passported benefits, will operate under the Single-tier Pension, and the transitional protection that will be put in place. Many women born between 1952 and 1953 believed that they would suffer a double adverse effect on their State Pension income, arising from the increases in their State Pension Age combined with their ineligibility for the Single-tier Pension, if it was introduced in 2017 as set out in the White Paper. The Government should clarify the position. Some women did not build up their own NI record because they had an expectation that they would be able to rely on their husband's contributions to give them entitlement to a Basic State Pension. The Government should assess and publish the cost of allowing women in this position who are within 15 years of State Pension Age to retain this right
Author: Great Britain: Department for Work and Pensions
Publisher: Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780101862028
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 28
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Book Description
Dated May 2013. Government response to HC 1000, session 2012-13 (ISBN 9780215055552)
Author: Rune Ervik
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131708859X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
The ’Golden Age' of the welfare state in Europe was characterised by a strengthening of social rights as citizens became increasingly protected through the collective provision of income security and social services. The oil crisis, inflation and high unemployment of the 1970s largely saw the end of welfare expansion with critical voices claiming the welfare state had created an unbalanced focus on the social rights of individuals, above their responsibilities as citizens. During the 1980s many western countries developed contractual modes of thinking and regulation within welfare policy. Contractualism has proved a significant organising principle for public reforms in general, and for social policy reforms in particular as it embraces both a way of justifying certain welfare policies and of constructing specific socio-legal policy instruments. Engaging with both the critique of the welfare state and the subsequent policy responses, expert contributors in this book examine contractualism as a discourse, comprising principles and justifying ideas, and as a legal and social practice. Covering the international debate on conditionality they discuss European experiences with active social citizenship ideas and contractualism providing individual case studies and comparisons from a wide range of European countries.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Work and Pensions Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215072707
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
It remains uncertain how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will manage the housing costs element of Universal Credit without increased risks of fraud and error. The Government has stated that an IT system (the Integrated Risk and Intelligence Service (IRIS)) will allow it to cross-check data and provide similar safeguards against fraudulent claims under Universal Credit as are currently operated by local authorities within the Housing Benefit system. However, the National Audit Office found that IRIS was 'missing' from the UC Pathfinders, and it remains unclear how or when DWP will achieve automated access to the range of property data currently available to local authorities. The official estimated benefit fraud rate is 0.7% of total benefits expenditure. The general public's misperception is that it is some 34 times higher. To reduce the risk of confusion or conflation in media reporting, DWP should publish statistics relating to the estimated level of benefit fraud on a separate day from those related to error in the benefits system. Fraud and error rates have plateaued from 2005/06 to 2012/13 and DWP must employ innovative approaches which are aligned with the known risk factors associated with each benefit to achieve reductions. Biometric identity systems could have an important role to play in identity verification processes across government. The Single Fraud Investigation Service (SFIS), which will investigate all social security benefit fraud across DWP, HMRC and local authorities, should be implemented in line with the roll out of Universal Credit.
