• State of Play ~ the Pension ‘Industry’ 2018 ;

• The Great Government Confidence Trick ;

•  The Golden Honey Pot ;

• The Pension Protection Fund ;

• Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes ?;

• Rt. Hon Frank Field DL M.P. & SelCom W&P .

Dear Reader,

it is almost 3 years since TMB carried out a review of the UK pensions ‘industry’.

The Bugler commenced by constructing a new empty TMB page entitled ‘State of the Pension ‘Industry’ 2018’, and after revising the published ‘state of play’ in 2015 looked forward to reporting positive progress of which, even the most meager, would be very welcome. For the 2015 review. Go Here.

Having carried out the 2015 revision and having got as far as the new empty page the whole exercise journalistically stalled.

What indeed had progressed since this review almost 3 years ago?

Well frankly, it was a struggle to find any positive news other than ‘Auto Enrolment’ (which carries it own tale of government deceit), never mind generally encouraging news upon which it might be possible to begin to build a degree of confidence of all pension holders in this UK wide self-serving ‘industry’.

Clearly sleepy hollow has continued at all levels of this ‘industry’ particularly those which most affect the lowly and clearly insignificant pensioner with pension maladministration issues, whether Fire Service, or not.

When it all goes awry not a single Taxpayer and levy supported pension Watchdog organisation has been there, or is there, to intervene on behalf of pensioners to ensure that Justice is seen to be done for them as individuals.

It seems that the pension headline grabbers of Carillon (36 pension schemes collapsed~£2 billion deficit) and Capita (the owners of the former Fire Service College), providers of pension ‘management’ schemes(an oxymoron), who are £381 millions in debt, which will see some of its pensioners losing a shocking 70% of their retirement income.

Although these errant companies are just that, political headline grabbers for the politicians to drool over, there remains the question of individual pensioners with issues whom it appears continue to be of little account to the WatchDogs probably because they produce no political motivation via the media.

Sadly it appears that not a single WatchDog organisation, TPR, TPO, and most regrettably, including the Parliamentary Select Committee for Work & Pensions, and thus the government, is prepared to put a human face to those victims whose incomes and existence actually depend on and continue to financially supports this quite useless monolith of impassively lazy pension

‘management’ bureaucrats.

It escapes the minds of all these overpaid bored politicians and  their bureaucratic unaccountable civil servants that unless a pensioner exists with a human face, with whom they all seem unable to identify; a human face which ought to receives the pastoral and pension WatchDog care to which they are entitled, no further savers’ money will be generated by these pensioners to prop up all the magnificent salaries of this ‘industry’ because confidence in the concept of a pension and investing for it, has entirely ebbed away, and as a consequence will continue to fail to generate confidence in pension savers, whether enforced by law or not, aka the Auto Enrolment Scheme.

If this government and its fat lazy WatchDog agencies do not regularly demonstrate and regularly publish  what it is that they have done for individual  pensioners with a simple pension Complaint then what is the point in having a pension in the first place, or indeed WatchDogs to protect them, if the WatchDogs at all these agencies simply fail to bark, and more importantly, to bite?

So in a couple of words what have this collective of WatchDogs achieved for the individual pensioner troubled by maladministration and malfeseance to say little of simple criminal fraud; absolutely nothing.

Currently not a single person or organisation in which the public perception ought to be that they are to be trusted as pension Watchdogs regularly demonstrates that  they are worthy of that trust  by being  prepared to step in at this lowly personal level to demonstrate that they really are Watchdogs, top to bottom, and thus protectors, and thus by their proactive policing encourage pension savers/re-investors to continue saving for their sylvan days.

Indeed in practice and by experience the perverse reverse is actually true.

Which part of this Golden Goose and Golden Egg life cycle is it that these paragons of lazy virtue cannot understand which even the most retarded village idiot can grasp… No Golden Goose-No Golden Egg-No ‘industry’ ?

So, now that we know what it is that this government and its agencies the TPR and the TPO are not prepared to do in protecting their pensioners what exactly is it that this cynical government does, which perversely confirms their love affair with the pensions ‘industry’, to the absolute detriment of all future pension savers/investors?

A failure which is resulting in savers/investors putting their money elsewhere offshore, or like the traditional French farmers, who wisely buys gold, and then puts it under their beds for the future?

So is all this yet more dramatic hyperbole by the Bugler or do the actual evidential actions of governments confirm their  City orientated confidence trickery?

This current confidence trickery is actually called Auto Enrolment which is a legal requirement that all companies whether large or small(a serious financial burden) must have a compulsory pension scheme for its workers.

Well, surely this is quite wonderful forcing the spendthrifts of today, who clearly live it up, to become the pension savers/investors of tomorrow. What could be better in this Utopian dream?

But perhaps in a simplistic way we ought to look at how this honey trail actually works in reality.

The reality is that the government are forcing workers and their small employers, whether they want to or not, to give the government and its chums in the City pension ‘industry’ a long term interest free endless loan until the day they retire…

But that cannot be possible?

Well in essence it actually is with the usual self fulfilling prophecy, if it looks too good to be true then it usually is.

Here is the Golden Honey Pot trail.

The worker is legally forced to pay into a company pension scheme supplemented by the employers.

The pension scheme accumulates money for the contributors to this joint pension scheme.

Along comes the predators from the City ‘pension industry’ who after the usual sales line encouragingly take this pot of gold to supposedly  invest it, to grow it, to harvest its bounty and then pay the company back a meagre return after deducting its ‘handling’ fees(and anything else it can think of).

None of which is passed back to the workers, but to the boardroom and the company shareholders ~ which are usually one and the same.

When the company hits a bumpy trading patch there is this handy pot of gold lying around called the pension fund apparently doing nothing and completely unsupervised by the WatchDog, The Pensions Regulator, Lesley Titcomb et al.

The Company without further ado surreptitiously dips its hands into the Pot.

Because the Pension Board of the company, the majority of whom are untrustworthy Trustees namely Company Boardroom members on the take,  can readily claim complete ignorance of the Statutory rules or what is really going on(The Nelson Eye), which allied with the honest cluelessness of the local workers representatives on the Pension Board who have been repeatedly ‘groomed into ignorance’  by clever company serving auditors/pension fund investors using deliberately convoluted financial ‘speak’.

Alas this vicious borrow and spend circle to bail out a disastrously managed company continues until the pension fund coffers are completely empty by which time the company is already heading over into the liquidation abyss of bankruptcy.

Though their Boardroom members and their shares holders remain oblivious(and wish to remain so) until like Capita it has a £381 million deficit; the pension fund and the workers are broke; and the green pasture pension visions disappear over the horizon just as some of the pensioners were celebrating  their retirement.

How is all that for morality never mind criminal fraud?

Now because this government is so chummy with the City of London and its pension fund management companies, with a nod and a wink, it throws these thieves, for there is no other collective description that fits them the PPF lifeline or rather more accurately, more of our Taxes.

The Pension Protection Fund was established to pay reduced compensation to members of eligible defined benefit pension schemes, when there is a ‘qualifying insolvency event in relation to the employer and where there are insufficient assets in the pension scheme to cover Pension Protection Fund levels of compensation’ ~  in plain English it went broke!

In more plain English the company stole the pension funds to bail out its criminal management incompetence and the pension fund is now broke, but because the government is so kindly to its own in the City of London the PPF compensating scheme is funded by the government

or more accurately the usual mugs, the Taxpayers… The circle of deceit and the Great Confidence Trick is thus complete.

In effect companies are legally licensed(Auto Enrolment) by the government to steal our taxes. Now that must surely be a great deal if you can get it?

The Chair of the Parliamentary Select Committee for Work and Pensions Rt Hon Frank Field DL M.P. said recently … “Another day, another outsourcing firm with massive debt, a huge pension deficit, a KPMG audit and the Big Four popping up at every turn in the company’s chequered history. Sadly, Capita goes on the growing list of firms we are investigating to see if their conduct has endangered current and future pensioners’ rights.”.  

Indeed they have…Who needs an investigation?…It is a plain as a Pikestaff

Before we leave this depressing vision of why no one in their right mind ought to subscribe to a single pension scheme in the 21^st Century, whether law or not,  we ought to look at how the ‘city pension industry’ views Mr. Field and his Select Committee’s vigorous interventions, though unfortunately still ignoring their collective duty to the individual pensioner in its failure to police their own WatchDogs, TPR and TPO and their collective failures to intervene on pensioners behalf proactively…

The role of the Select Committee(SelCom) is to police the entire pension ‘industry’. It does not deal with individuals complaining about their maladministered  Pension Scheme, nor does it deal with individual pension complaints.

In the first instance the Select Committee has the eternally dopey TPR to police the supposed health and legal compliance of Pension Schemes with the 1993 Pensions Act(as amended) which spends most of its time asleep and missing every liquidated bus which happens by, whether by design to help its chums in the city pension industry or simply by monumental managerial incompetence.

Though it should be said that that Ms Nicola Parish, the Regulatory Enforcer and those who serve  her have demonstrated  commendable commitment to their task so much so in fact that to the squealing dismay of the errant scheme Trustees /managers she has made herself  mightily unpopular in the City.

Now that is the kind of WatchDogs that TPR and TPO need to bolster Public confidence. More power to her elbow!

Perhaps it is time Titcomb was booted out and the real tiger of Parish, rather then a pushover pussy cat, was put in charge of TPO?

Hard work and impartial commitment should always be rewarded.

Titcomb could talk~the~talk, but could not, walk~the~walk…

In the second instance SelCom it has the equally devious TPO to deal with who are supposed to deal with and protect individual personal pension complaints not work on behalf of the City and the pension ‘industry’.

This is another  organisation which expends huge amounts of effort and our taxes (on behalf of the city pension industry) doing everything it can to avoid dealing with a single pension complaint whilst smirking at meetings with its chums(which it describes as its ‘stakeholders’) in the city pension industry as they gloat over the amount of money they have saved them to the criminal deceit of the pensioners who have placed their trust in them.

What fools we are, but not for much longer.

Recently once more, and becoming perpetually, the failed ‘Regulator’ Lesley Titcomb, whose professional demise can now be measured in contract time left, or less, and before becoming an embarrassment to herself needs to depart, was chided once more by Mr. Fields which was reported in the ‘Pensionage Age©’ publication thus….

” Work and Pensions Committee chair Frank Field has again criticised The Pensions Regulator for “sniffling” around Carillion, “clearly to no effect” as it collapsed under the watch of the Regulator.

The Regulator is under intense scrutiny from the Work and Pensions Committee in light of Carillion’s collapse and its £2bn pension scheme deficit. Field has had numerous communications with TPR chief executive Lesley Titcomb, and has today published further correspondence with the chief executive, ahead of the regulator’s appearance in front of the committee on 22 February.

“The Pensions Regulator has been sniffing around the company since 2008, clearly to no effect. While The Pensions Regulator was busy sniffing around, the company collapsed with a near billion pound pension deficit,” Field said

“There is not a hope now of The Pensions Regulator salvaging anything that could put a dent in that deficit.

We look forward to The Pensions Regulator explaining what difference it would have made for pensioners if it had not sat on its hands this whole time.”.

Under the banner headline the ‘Professional Pensions®’ asked its industry…

“Do you think Frank Field, chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, is a good thing for pensions?”.

Aside from being rather ungrammatical and with the assumption that Frank Fields MP is the Committee per se instead of its Chair, and bearing in mind that the PP publication itself would not exist if there was no pensioner savers/investors industry to report on, surprisingly the ‘industry’ voted with its  wallets that the  Hon Frank Field DL M.P. was a good thing by a clear margin of 53% of the their industry poll.

This left 30% who said ‘No’, and 17% per cent who did not know(how can you not know? ~ is this the intellectual capacity of this ‘industry’?.

Of course, reassuringly, there were those who replied that he was a ‘bully’; ‘a grumpy old man’; ‘ignorant of the industry’, etc. 

For the actual  detail of the responses to the poll , Go Here.

Nevertheless in spite of this welcome and well deserved positive note it seems to the Bugler that the Select Committee will have to call the senior management of  TPR and TPO in sooner rather than later to give a proper in depth accounting of their operations.

If only to establish for the benefit of the pension saving Public who it is in fact they think it is they are working for, and accountable to? The Public or the City of London?

SelCom needs particularly to scrutinise senior TPR and TPO management who have without doubt clear unhealthy affiliations within the City pension ‘Industry’ which currently compromises their impartiality and which, if there is a partiality in law, must always lean towards the plaintiff/complainant as it has for a long time been established in the judicial system.

How is that Mr. A. Arter the current Pensions Ombudsman, who runs a legitimate nursery business worth over £0.6mil who no doubt employs staff and hopefully has an Auto Enrolment pension scheme in place for them, whilst coincidentally holding shares in 22 major pension schemes, but still manages to claim with hand on heart that he is impartial in his role as Pension Ombudsman?