In an outspoken attack, Christine Farnish, chief executive of the National Association of Pension Funds, has dubbed the proposals for UK pension reform put forward by Lord Turner 'Stalinist'.
Ms Farnish’s comments were reported by The Guardian newspaper, and come ahead of the release of NAPF’s own proposals to create a number of not-for-profit ‘supertrusts’ to administer an automatic savings system for UK workers.
Speaking of Lord Turner’s idea for a so-called ‘Britsaver’ scheme that would automatically enroll all UK workers not covered by an existing company scheme, Ms Farnish was quoted as saying, It does sound like a throwback to the Stalinist era, setting up a single monolithic structure. I do wonder whether the real plot wasn’t to try and provoke the industry to come up with something better.
NAPF has already been approached by the UK government to come up with alternative ideas to compare against those advocated by the Turner report. NAPF’s ‘supertrust’ ideas will be formally released at the end of February, though the trusts are likely to be designed to enable people ultimately to choose their own savings administrator.
NAPF believes that this element of competition would allow the trust to get a better deal with fund managers than the single entity envisaged under the Turner report.