Personal Security

Next year will see the start of two major legacies of New Labour social policy: NEST and compulsion. Taken together, they are intended to ensure that all employees have some form of pension provision over and above the increasingly paltry provisions of the state pension and associated means-tested benefits. The latter is simply the concept that all employers must enrol all employees in a pension scheme. It is then up to the employees to opt out of that scheme, which they are less likely to do. NEST is the vehicle created to be the scheme for employers who do not already have pension scheme provision: an ultra low cost Defined Contribution (DC) scheme, designed to be simple and cheap.
Both these things are laudable in their intention. In the scramble to condemn the baby-boomers for bankrupting the state and all the good private sector pension schemes, we tend to forget that a good number of them will spend their retirements in poverty, reliant on the means-tested state benefits that are the pensioner equivalent of the dole. If the wealthiest generation in history has these problems, imagine what it will be like for the rest of us. So the idea of pushing us all towards making our own pension provision, and making it cheaper and easier to do so is a good one. Such savings would be inherently ours, whilst still subject to the rules governing all pensions: chiefly that they cannot be drawn until age 55. Beyond that, they would operate in much the same way as any other DC pension or investment. This, of course, is where the problems start.
As the startling hubris of pension scheme actuaries - convinced that market returns of 9% a year would be an everlasting constant - led to the closure of ever more Final Salary pension schemes, the only significant alternative has been the DC pension scheme, which is effectively just an investment vehicle that has restrictions on when and how you can access the invested money. How and why this should have become the preferred form of pension provision is perhaps a discussion for another day, but it is worth noting that whilst invested, most of the money is held by an insurance company, and in order to avoid punitive tax charges, 75% of this money has to be paid to an insurance company at retirement. I guess that's just a coincidence.
Whatever the reasons for its popularity, the DC scheme is now the norm. Chances are, if you have any sort of pension provision, you're in a DC scheme. I wonder how often you check the performance of your chosen investments. I work in the financial services sector and I don't do it more than about once a year. I mean, that's not really a problem: I'm in this for the long run, so the last thing I want to do is start to panic about short term fluctuations in equities, bonds or even the price of gold. In the long term the trend is always upwards. Except of course that it isn't: at several points in the last twenty years index linked investments would have made a loss when adjusted for inflation if drawn at the 'wrong' time. Various schemes have various vehicles to avoid 'the wrong time' being when you happen to need or want retire, such as 'lifestyling' or offering funds run by a fund manager who is supposed to be able to get better than index linked returns on your investments, although such things invariably incur an additional annual charge that eats away at that extra interest. So, even though massive returns on investments are not forthcoming, the models used to predict how much money is needed to fund a comfortable retirement still assume year on year investment growth of 7% against a rate of inflation of 2.5%. Anyone who's paid even  scant attention to inflation over the last few years will know that it has only been at or below 2.5% for 7 of the last 20 years (based on September RPI values). This means that the statutory model for calculating potential retirement provision is about as realistic as the actuarial projections that allowed companies to take 'contribution holidays' from their final salary pension schemes back in the 80s and 90s, ensuring the death of those shemes. However, the government is reluctant to change the assumptions used in the model to more pessimistic (or realistic) ones for fear that it will engender a sense of futility in savers and cause people to give up on pension saving altogether rather than scare them into saving more. Of course in the case of NEST, the impetus to invest more is not there, as it is not going to be possible to do so. Why this should be so is unclear, as it would seem to remove another option to plan seriously for retirement. It seems that the hope is that once in one scheme, people will see the benefits of investing in their future and start another pension scheme with an insurer. No really.

Hmm, not bad...

Hmm, not so good...

Better than stuffing it under your mattress.

Sometimes better than stuffing it under your mattress.

NEST does not have managed funds because it is designed to cost the minimum for the members. The notion behind this is commendable in that no one should be compelled to pay for the profits of the fund managers, especially when there is no guarantee of a return. However, what it also means is that we all have to effectively become our own fund managers, suddenly realising in our lunchbreaks that the time to sell Pacific equities is now and giving NEST a call to move the lot to European bonds. This sounds very glamorous, but the reality is mundane, and if it is a scheme for people who weren't interested in pension provision in the first place, what is the likelihood that they will suddenly find the interest to get actively involved in making that pension better? I suppose it is possible that some people will, on finding their money is inaccessible take an interest in playing the markets: it's just possible that people will find out that it really doesn't take much to be a Master of the Universe.
Of course what is more likely is that people will be encouraged to invest in 'safer' funds: these traditionally being things like government bonds. Obviously in the case of many governments, such investments have recently become considerably more risky, although that does also mean the long term yields are up. This would be good for the people who have invested in them, but not so good for the tax payers saddled with the extra cost of paying off their country's debts.
So let's think about this a bit more in terms of NEST. This means that the government has set up a pension scheme in which you could invest in the government's debt via an insurance company. Why via an insurance company? Why doesn't NEST buy bonds direct? We have National Savings, why don't we just run NEST in a similar manner? Oh, I forgot,  someone has to make a profit out of your welfare: god forbid you invest in your general wellbeing without paying some superannuated waster for the privilege. Let us not forget, in the business of your future wellbeing just who is lobbying on your behalf. The people whose interest is the status quo that they generated must surely be interested in alternatives that might further benefit you and your government at the expense of their profit, mustn't they? What else could they possibly want?