The Pensions Regulator
The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has been active this year. Back in February a bus company and its owner were fined just over £31,000 for ‘wilfully failing to comply with the law on workplace pensions’ by failing to Auto Enrol a total of 36 staff into a pension scheme. That was the first prosecution for auto-enrolment […]
New State Pension Scheme
A new State pension scheme will come into operation in little more than 15 months, in April 2016. The existing State scheme is complex, involving a basic State pension and various earnings-related supplements, notably the Second State Pension (‘S2P’). A further complication has been the option of contracting out of S2P and diverting National Insurance […]
Pensioner Bonds
Details have been announced of the new National Savings Pensioner Bonds, which are designed to appease pensioners suffering from on-going low rates of interest on their savings. The Bonds will be available to over-65 year olds in January 2015 and will offer ‘market-leading’ interest rates of 4% a year over three years and 2.8% over […]
Annuities Improved
Many people assumed that the attractions of being able to draw income from pension plans would eclipse the annuity market, but recent stock market volatility provided a reminder of the benefits of a guaranteed stable lifetime income. Furthermore, the Autumn Statement contained an important additional benefit to annuities, in that payments made from joint life […]
