It should also be remembered that while boosting levels of investment in the UK economy should be beneficial for society as a whole, accessing the money held in pension savings needs to be approached very carefully.
Millions of people sit behind pension savings. Each individual, especially in DC pension schemes, relies on the investment performance of their pension pots in order to boost their savings for retirement.
Initial response to the pensions review, which appears (to some extent) to be building on the previous government’s direction of travel, seems to have been positive and generally welcomed by industry.
However, as is invariably the case when dealing with pensions, the utmost care will need to be taken in making decisions relating to wholesale structural change to the approach to investment by trustees of trust-based pension schemes.
There is no denying that the intentions of the pensions review are good but the devil, as always in pensions, will be in the detail.
Beth Brown and Kate Payne are partners at Arc Pensions Law
