Partner Rosalind Connor comments in The Times on the complications that can arise when insurance companies buy out businesses’ pension schemes
Last night Channel 5 shone a spotlight on Britain’s “savings time bomb” in a documentary that was enough to give anyone nightmares.
Many of the Britons interviewed on Britain’s Great Pension Crisis had chilling tales. Can it really be this bad?
The Waspi (women against state pension inequality) campaign, which was launched in 2015 in protest at an increase in the women’s pension age from 60 to 66, is one example of how older people feel let down by the system. But there are plenty of other concerns, as raised in the Times article.
One of these relates to a fundamental restructuring taking place as insurance companies relieve businesses of their pension burdens by buying out the schemes.
Partner Rosalind Connor commented these are complicated undertakings that often expose many underlying problems.
“Frequently, administrative or data errors have crept in which result in some pensions being overpaid and some underpaid,” Connor explains. “And this might have been going on for years.”
Remedying and correcting all this is not easy. “Adjusting payments down is much harder than adjusting up,” she says. “But trust law is about following the rules of the scheme and it is better done now than, say, in ten years’ time.”
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