OpinionJul 10 2019

Your Shout: Letters to the editor

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Your Shout: Letters to the editor
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Regarding the article by Maria Espadinha, “Provider slams FCA analysis of fee disclosure” (July 1): So this ongoing cost-benefit analysis is going to make it easier for ‘members’ to see the actual break down of scheme costs and charges? How many workplace members ever look at or even understand their pensions? As far as most are concerned, workplace pensions are just another thing they have to pay into and at some distant point in time they will get a “fantastic pension” (in US President Donald Trump’s terminology). 

So what about the few who check out their scheme charges and do not like them, what are they going to do about it? Surely it is the employer who is the client of the providers, and the employer who chooses the scheme?

What is coming next? Will the employer be forced to regularly check out employee happiness with the scheme and then switch schemes?

Where does this micro-regulatory management/big brother mentality end?

Perhaps it does not. It is a new industry that creates its own market and devices for expanding itself.

Clive Fox
Retired IFA

 

Waspi campaign continues

I am one of the many 1950s women impacted by the rise in state pension age. I am very pleased to see that the firefighters and judges have won their battle against the unfair changes being forced on people by the government and hope that the judicial review brought by the 1950s women will find similar success.

I am so tired of reading that my state pension age has only increased by 18 months – this is simply fiction. I am now almost 64 and will not reach it until my 66th birthday. Even without using a computer I can work out that this is much more than 18 months.

We know that the Department for Work and Pensions held meetings over the years where they knew that the many 1950s women had no idea what was about to happen with our state pension age, yet they chose to do nothing to inform us. We should not be penalised for the total mis-management of the age increase. No other decade of people (including men) have had such a drastic change in pension age foisted on them with so little notice.

I started work full time in 1971 after leaving school I can assure you that there was no such thing as equality at work. In fact, when I queried why a male colleague was earning significantly more than me for the same job role I was told that my husband would top up my salary. 

We could not join most company pension schemes until the 1980s and many of us combined working with raising a family and caring for older relatives at the same time. We must have saved the government a fortune in care costs as unpaid carers alone. 

I am also appalled by the way we are being portrayed as greedy and selfish and uncaring towards the generation below us. This is a lie – we paid in all our working lives to provide a pension for those who had retired before us, many of whom had contributed very little in national insurance contributions but still got their pensions, thanks to us. 

At no time do I ever remember begrudging them their pension – or there being a sustained campaign by the government and media aimed at antagonising us because we were paying in for someone else to benefit.

Young people need to be in work – if we were allowed to retire as promised when we started work at the age of 60 this would free up many jobs for young people to take on. This would, at a stroke, reduce the benefits budget, increase revenue from income tax, and reduce unemployment among younger people. 

The government seems unable to decide how much it will cost to honour the promise made to the 1950s women when we started work that we would retire at 60. It varies from minister to minister and press release to press release – but the savings in unemployment benefit and housing benefits are never included in their calculations.

Many 1950s women have more years of national insurance contributions required for a state pension and do not benefit a penny from working more years, often at a great cost to our health and wellbeing.

Dot Holden
Former Waspi campaign member

 

First law of insurance

Regarding the story, “PFS calls for in-depth analysis of PI market” (July 2): Actually professional indemnity is a very simple concept.1. You have got to have it.2. Therefore they can charge what they like.3. If you claim you probably will not be able to renew or it will cost you two years’ profits.4. They will do their best to repudiate the claim for the most spurious of reasons, but this will still result in point three (above) anyway.

This actually proves Katz’s first law of insurance: we will take the largest premium we can and if you claim we will do our best to repudiate.

Harry Katz
HA7 Consulting

 

Isa offerings

Regarding James Coney’s article, “Marketing Win” (June 27): Mr Coney is suggesting that Lifetime Isas have been a success. I would beg to differ. For one thing I would not say 286,000 accounts is a success, after more than two years. The likely reason is there are hardly any providers of the Isa, whether you are looking for a cash Isa or an investment Isa. I would have thought the government should have insisted that all providers that offer traditional Isas have to offer Lisas. After all, providing Isas is being given a licence, therefore that privilege should not mean providers can cherry pick which type of Isa they offer.

Clive Farrell
Galleon Wealth Management