March is upon us and spring around the corner, which should serve as a reminder of the end of tax year deadline. So whether you are serious about building a pension pot or taking the first step to planning for retirement, there is just over one month for you to pay this years contribution before…
Category: Pensions
Employers can breathe a sigh of relief
Employers faced with the burden of implementing an auto-enrolment scheme for their employees will welcome the change in stance by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). This now means that employers will have more time to notify their employees about a waiting period and their right to opt in to the company scheme. …
Improving transfers and growing big fat pension pots
Transferring a company pension from an ex-employer to a new arrangement has never been the easiest of tasks. Normally the pension provider, on behalf of the company, issues a ‘leaver pack’ written in pensions technical ‘jargon’ that more often than not is filed away until retirement. It is no wonder workers have built up a string…
Planning to down tools now?
Retirement is often considered the holiday of a lifetime or the chance to rest and rewind after a busy career. The State provides only a meagre pension and so the pension plans and company schemes you have been paying in to for many years should provide for the little extras when you retire. If you…
Once a Frozen Pension always a Frozen Pension
In the distant past, when a member left a final salary or career average scheme, the pension earned was frozen. This meant the pension was left to wither on the vine rather than enjoy the returns on the money invested. Anyone with an ounce of sense would expect the right to a stream of deferred pay to at…
Tough economic conditions mean small employers benefit from delay
Small firms have been given an extra year to prepare for the auto enrolment of their employees into a qualifying pension scheme. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has announced a revised timetable so that small firms with fewer than 50 employees will not begin the process until mid 2015 instead of April 2014…
A bleak old age!
The Workplace Retirement Income Commission recently reported that millions of private sector workers face a ‘bleak old age’ because they fell through the cracks of pension provision. Evidently the number of people saving in to company pension schemes in the private sector has almost halved since 1991! This may come as no great surprise given the shape of the…
Getting serious now rather than later could secure the retirement you deserve
Public sector workers are making a stand, State Pension is under threat and world markets are in disarray. Newspaper headlines are full of one pension scare after another! So will there be enough in the pension kitty when you eventually come to retire? You should be concerned! After all you work long and hard enough…
Flex Benefits – providing the right package
More and more employers are aware that a good salary alone is not enough to attract and retain the best staff. Companies realise that offering the right benefits package is essential whilst employees are demanding greater flexibility from their package. Employers planning to introduce a flexible benefit package may also provide a solution for the…
The pensions timebomb
Falling markets could devastate the retirement incomes of a generation – but there are ways to reduce the pain.
Plummeting stock markets have dashed the plans of more than 100,000 people in risky money-purchase pensions planning to retire in the next year.
Worst hit are people approaching retirement who saved in old-fashioned personal pensions that do not protect funds against stock market volatility.