Government criticised for pension meddling

Wed, 28 Mar 2007

A financing expert has criticised the government for constantly revising the pensions system in the wake of the A-Day reforms.

On April 6th 2006, dubbed A-Day by the pensions industry, a series of changes were implemented to try and simplify the pensions process for the man on the street.

However, Andrew James, retirement planning manager with financial services provider Edward Jones, has said that while the top five per cent of employees benefited from the reforms, 95 per cent of the workforce subsequently made no changes to their pension planning.

Explaining why he feels A-Day has not encouraged many people to update their pension scheme, Mr James contended that the government is to blame for giving mixed messages over issues such as whether antiques, overseas property and vintage cars can be included in pension funds.

"There have also been changes made and then negated with regard to term assurance [and] passing pension funds on," he explained.

"We would like to see better legislation in place to help people save for retirement without sudden changes."

In 2012, the government proposes to launch a new national pensions savings scheme, which involves auto-enrolment for the majority of the UK workforce.

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