The Devil is in the Detail – Retirement Age Regulations Published
You’ll probably remember that we wrote in our blog recently about the removal of the Default Retirement Age from April. The post is here.
Just a short post today to keep you up to speed. As you know we aim to trawl through all the information slushing about online to bring you stuff that’s relevant, fresh and that we think you’ll find interesting. If you are not one of our clients we’re sure that your advisers will be doing the same for you, won’t they?
Those all round good eggs at DLA Piper LLP have issued an update on the new regulations that have been issued by the government regarding the removal of the Default Retirement Age. In the old days the ink would still have been wet it’s the information is so fresh!
You can click through to the article here. There’s some really good stuff in there on Group Insured Benefits and the Transitional Arrangements as well as an excellent summary under Implications. I must say that the stuff that DLA Piper issue is really good like that in giving a good clear summary.
The insured benefit stuff isn’t quite as we were led to believe. In the previous post we wondered whether the government would “walk the talk”. Well the good news is that it has – almost.
The exemption only applies to employees who are the older of 65 or State Pensionable Age. At the moment that’s not a problem as they are broadly the same – younger for women. The government are planning to move us all to a State Pensionable Age of 68 in the future. That means you could be looking at covering employees up to 68.
Employers will need to give some thought to whether they still want to provide benefits like life assurance, income protection and critical illness to employees over State Pensionable Age.
As if you didn’t have enough on your plate to think about!
5 Top Tips to protect your business
Just a very short post. As part of our service to clients we constantly scan all manner of information to try to dig out relevant information that our clients may have missed – and may be relevant to them. We do the hard work so our clients don’t have to!
It seems a shame to keep all this stuff to ourselves. So we thought, from time to time, when there’s something that we think will interest everybody, we’ll post it here on our blog.
The latest article we’ve received is from those very nice people at Pitmans who are a legal firm with offices in Reading and London. They’ve put together a really useful article setting out their five top tips for protecting your business in 2011. For those of you who have been following our blog there’s a nice concise bit in there on the removal of the Default Retirement Age. It’s something that we’ve written about in our article here.
There’s a link to the Pitmans article here.
We hope you enjoy it!
£33bn Improvement in pension deficits in FTSE 350 companies – Hymans Robertson
A couple of bits of background reading
As ever nothing stays the same. Just a short post to include a couple of links to some good material that I have been sent by the very nice people at Herbert Smith LLP and DLA Piper LLP. We thought we’d include the links and a little bit of background to save you the time. We try to scour the web for this sort of thing so our clients don’t have to!
Herbert Smith – Round up of pensions developments
Click here a good overview of everything that’s going on in the world of pensions. If your organisation participates in a final salary multi-employer pension scheme there’s a good write up of a Scottish case. It involves an insolvent employer and a £20m debt. We won’t say any more it’ll only spoil the ending!
There’s also a good article on a TUPE case where some employees ended up getting taxed on a compensation payment for loss of benefits on a TUPE transfer. Buyer beware is the motto for TUPE transactions.
DLA Piper LLP – Be Aware
Click here for the February edition of the DLA Piper Employment Law publication Be Aware.
There’s some good stuff on the removal of the Default Retirement Age and what you can and can’t do. There’s also a good round up of what’s on the horizon legislation wise. Finally, the At a Glance section is a good overview of the various pay rates, maximum awards etc.
European ruling could mean lower pensions for men
Equality ruling could be effective from 1 March 2011 – The Pensions Advisory Service (TPAS).
We strongly suggest that you click the link above and read the article from The Pensions Advisory Service. It explains a pending judgement in the European Court of Justice that has pretty much come in under the radar.
It’s worrying that Malcolm Tarling from the Association of British Insurers (ABI) says:
‘We have absolutely no inkling of what the judgement might say but the advice we’ve given to members is to prepare for a worst case scenario.’
The rate for buying a pension has always been better for a man reflecting the fact that, on average, women live longer than men. If insurance companies have to offer the same rates for men and women all it will mean is that men get less pension for their pot of money.
At a time when we already have a huge savings gap and the average pension pot at retirement is about £24,000 this could be a devastating blow. Let’s hope that the European Court of Justice sees some sense in this quest to achieve maximum gender equality.
As always seems to be the theme of so much in our industry at the moment – watch this space!