Do you feel secure and comfortable with your company’s level of commitment to your pension income and your company pension scheme?
It appears this week that over 40% of larger UK employers will be using the introduction of compulsory company pension schemes for all, in the 2012 NEST scheme, as an occasion to review their pension costs.
We can confidently expect that, in the current climate, with many company pension schemes having become a millstone round the neck of the employers they serve, such ‘reviews’ are unlikely to increase the pension income of the employee down at the coal face.
Anyone who reads the pension news section of our website knows that the general trend, in both public and private sectors, is a gradual reduction in corporate responsibility for our pension planning.
This creates a need for us to take up the slack ourselves, to take control of our own futures, rather than depend on benevolent employers to take care of us, through our company pension schemes.
With even the larger financial institutions such as Lloyds and RBS having been wrong-footed by developments in the markets in recent years, and now struggling with large pensions deficits as a result, the writing is clearly on the wall, with regard to our pension income.
We share a common desire for a comfortable income that will secure our ability to retire. Never before has the old proverb been so true: ‘If it’s to be – it’s up to me’.
