Dáil Drawdown is a new edition to our blog and brings
you recent pension news straight from the Dáil Chamber. Here
is our first installment.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
We asked a 1000 people…
As an industry we know that:
- the current ratio of people working versus those in retirement will half over the next two decades,
- the pending pension burden is unlikely to be absorbed by the state,
- approximately 50% of people working in Ireland do not have a pension and
- life and pension sales according to the IIF (Irish Insurance Federation) 2012 annual report has fallen to “barely 40% of their 2007 peak”.
Unsurprisingly, pensions coverage is being debated ad nausem by the
entire pensions industry. However, amongst all the various discussion, debates
and column inches the view of the Irish public is often overlooked.
As a result of this,
Independent Trustee Company commissioned a RED C survey to investigate why
people are reluctant to invest in pensions. We surveyed over 1000 people with
some interesting results;
Findings
- Whilst
affordability is an issue, it is not the overriding problem, poor performance
and access are also a major cause of concern.
- ‘A fear of losing money’ and ‘affordability’ were found to be the main concerns for female respondents.
- Male respondents were more likely to mention ‘retirement being too far off ‘ and ‘an overall lack of trust’ than their female counterparts.
- Middle-aged respondents were most likely to mention ‘a fear of losing some or all of the money’.
- ‘Affordability’ was most likely to be mentioned by people aged 35-54 years.
- Those over 65 years of age; and younger adults were most likely to say that ‘pensions are too complicated’.
We are still digesting these results but it is clear
that the lack of pension investment cannot be dismissed as a problem caused by “the economy”.
We believe these results have highlighted the need for transparent and secure
pension products. Some industry “experts” would lead you to believe that we need to
educate the public; this is rubbish, the industry needs to provide people with a
product that is designed with them as the consumer in mind and not the other
way around!
Michael Keyes
Sales & Marketing Director
Thursday, June 21, 2012
How a Rolls Royce benefit has become a "clapped out banger”
The quickening end to Defined Benefit Pension Arrangements
New
statutory requirements relating to funding defined benefit schemes have
recently become law with the coming into force on 1st May of the Social Welfare and Pensions Act 2012. The new rules set down will
inevitably lead to an increase in the wind-up of defined benefit pension structures.
This is due, among other things, to the new requirement for a “risk reserve” (additional
funding) to be set aside to act as a buffer against further economic turmoil.
These new measures are of course going to add further pressure on company
balance sheets and indeed we have already seen in the past week AIB and
Independent News and Media announce their intention to shut down their company
defined benefit schemes.
Defined
Benefit schemes have long been considered the Rolls Royce of pension structures
offering a guaranteed pension for life based on an employee’s final salary.
However, in recent years these pension schemes have been under severe pressure
due to volatile asset values and increasing liabilities which have been caused by
bad investment performance, low German bond yields and increasing life
expectancy. These issues coupled with a difficult business environment,
increasing taxation and regulation, and a poor economic outlook have caused employers
to consider restructuring their company pension arrangements. The new funding
rules introduced by the Social Welfare and Pensions Act 2012 will now force
employers to make decisions (as early as this December) they had been hoping to
avoid with such decisions having an immediate impact on company employees.
Take
an employee who has been a member of her company’s defined benefit pension for
the past fourteen years. She has been contributing 6% of her gross salary every
year of her employment with a matching contribution by the employer, but is
still sixteen years from her retirement age. Unbeknownst to her, much of the
contributions she has being paying in to the scheme have been used to pay the
pensions of the retiring employees of her company. Over the past 14 years, she
and her employer have each contributed approximately €42,000 to the scheme and she
believed that she had amassed a fund of €84,000+ allowing for investment growth
and charges. Her company have now decided to wind up the defined benefit scheme
and transfer her benefits to a defined contribution arrangement. It is at this
point she realises that not only does she have less in her pension than she
originally thought she actually has less than her own contributions. One of the
main reasons for this is the legislation governing defined benefits pensions
require the scheme trustees to give 100% priority to retired members so some of
the money she thought she was saving for herself actually went to people she’s
probably never met (unless she attends the company’s annual retirement do). In
essence her Rolls Royce benefit has become a clapped out banger.
So
what are a member employees options now and what can they expect from their
employer? All employers are required by law to ensure their company employees
have some access to a pension arrangement so it cannot be a case of walking
away from responsibilities. Companies will have to consider restructuring their
pension offering which will involve establishing some type of defined
contribution structure. Employers and employees are increasingly looking at other
pension arrangement options such as one member pension trusts or Personal Retirement Saving Accounts (PRSAs) to avoid the risks of underfunding and to bring some
sense of equity, fairness and transparency to their pension provision which
they do not perceive as being possible under the defined benefit structure.
These structures also allow an individual and employer to control the cost of
pension provision.
The realisation that defined benefit is not a guarantee of benefits at retirement will be an unwelcome message for most employees, but it is better they know now rather than at the point of retirement when their options are restricted. The financial implications of such changes to their pension arrangements will be specific to each employee. Some of the differences include different methods of calculating tax free cash lump sums, making individual investment decisions if the employee wants to and decisions on what can be done with their retirement fund at retirement, such as reinvesting in an Approved Retirement Fund (ARF) or deciding when or what type of pension to buy.
The realisation that defined benefit is not a guarantee of benefits at retirement will be an unwelcome message for most employees, but it is better they know now rather than at the point of retirement when their options are restricted. The financial implications of such changes to their pension arrangements will be specific to each employee. Some of the differences include different methods of calculating tax free cash lump sums, making individual investment decisions if the employee wants to and decisions on what can be done with their retirement fund at retirement, such as reinvesting in an Approved Retirement Fund (ARF) or deciding when or what type of pension to buy.
The
access to the ARF regime after retirement has been significantly widened
recently for members of defined contribution pension arrangements. The ARF option allows someone who has retired
to pass a capital sum to his or her family after their death. However, this
option is not available to retired members of defined benefit schemes. After retirement, the majority of members of
defined benefit schemes are limited to taking an annuity which can prove to be
expensive and inefficient for estate planning purposes.
The
switch of decision making and responsibility for funding to provide sufficient
benefits for employers to employees has been occurring gradually, but the new
funding rules for defined benefit pensions under the Social Welfare and
Pensions Act will accelerate the change. This presents an opportunity to create
flexible pension arrangements that will allow employers and employees fund for
their retirement while giving control of how these are funded and drawn down to
the employee.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Aidan McLoughlin discusses upcoming regulation and future changes in the Irish Pension Market at EPI Summit
Aidan McLoughlin, Managing Director of Independent Trustee Company recently attended the European Pension and Investment Summit in the Netherlands. As a delegate at the event, Aidan was asked his opinion on upcoming regulation, the European approach to structuring pensions and future changes in the Irish pension market. You can view the full interview by clicking on the image below.
Monday, June 11, 2012
NEST: Protecting their young?
The UK
government is making changes to encourage people to save for
retirement. The Pensions Act 2008 introduced new duties on employers to
provide access to a workplace pension scheme. All employees will be
automatically enrolled into an occupational pension (unless they opt out) and
where employers do not already have a scheme, people’s money will be invested
in NEST. NEST (National Employment Savings Trust) will be a universal, defined
contribution scheme, accumulating a fund during a workers life to purchase an
annuity on retirement. It
is due to commence in October 2012.
Much
scrutiny has been given to the investment choices that NEST will make available
to their members. When it
comes to the funds that NEST invests their members in in the early years this
differs substantially to what is typically used in standard Defined
Contribution Lifestyle funds in Ireland.
NEST carried out extensive
research and consultation and as a result they found that when it comes to
younger members- those under 30- that they’re especially sensitive to
volatility and loss and are most likely to act adversely in the face of such
volatility. NEST will invest younger members- in their 20’s - initially
in funds that will target investment returns that look to match inflation after
all charges have been taken out. The next phase where members will spend
the majority of their time circa 30 years, will target returns of inflation
plus 3% after charges, the final stage is designed to manage the risk of shocks
closer to retirement.
Niamh Quirke
Friday, June 8, 2012
The Pensions Board publishes funding rules for defined benefit pension schemes
Yesterday, the Pensions Board published revised rules for defined
benefit schemes and announced the deadlines by which trustees must submit
funding proposals to the Board to deal with scheme deficits.
The full Press Release on the revised rules can be found on the Pensions Board website.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Sovereign Annuities – How will they work?
The scale of the funding crisis in Defined Benefit
Schemes has been a topic of much debate for the last number of years. One of
the solutions proposed by government was to introduce a Sovereign Annuity
option. As the yield on Irish Government bonds is higher than the yield on the
bonds normally used to back annuity the effect should be to reduce the scheme’s
liabilities. Thus a sovereign annuity is
designed to ease funding pressures on a Defined Benefit scheme, provide a
source of funds to the State and also to adjust the priority rules in a more
acceptable manner.
The first sovereign annuity product is due to be launched
in the coming weeks. Initially, this sovereign annuity product will be based on
Irish and French bonds. It is expected that this will mainly be of interest to
schemes which are in wind up and in some cases where the employer company is
also in liquidation. It is estimated that the total value of the sovereign
annuity market will be approximately €2-3 billion.
However this sovereign annuity product will only be
available to pensioners and not to active and deferred members. This causes a dilemma
for the trustees: are you disadvantaging pensioners (by linking their pensions
to sovereign annuities) to improve the position of other member classes (by increasing
the amount of the fund available to pay for their benefits)?
So it remains to be seen how sovereign annuities will
work in practical terms. It will be interesting to see how trustees and pension
scheme members will react to this new and long awaited product.
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