Mayday, Mayday, Mayday ... calling all pension experts, you've been rumbled.

How Effective is your Pension at meeting your Retirement income needs?

A simple enough question right? I mean this is a highly regulated product, with lots of 'experts' dipping their fingers into your pension pot, not to mention 22m others.

Over 25 years ago I was forced to use a 'Ghost Writer' to expose bad practice in the pensions world, because my then bosses didn't want me asking this question.

My last boss called me 'the most dangerous man in pensions' as I left the comfort of a PAYE role to prove that better outcomes could be achieved from 'boring pensions'.

I tried for 15 years to change my bosses minds to get pension computers to stop saying 'No' in order to get better outcomes for millions of savers, who had no chance of enjoying a decent pension income.

In 2010 I published 'Please Mind the Gap' to highlight a crippling savings gap crisis and worked with several divisions at the FSA to design a holistic computer that would say 'Yes'.

In the same year Aviva & Deloitte published their Pan-European report called 'Mind the Gap' which identified exactly the same problem as my report, but it didn't offer a solution.

Whilst my report focused on 'Cost of Delay Dynamics' and 'Affordability of Contributions', Aviva & Deloitte, and the rest of the Pension Industry, decided charges were too high and 'Cost' was the answer to improving outcomes.

Have Low-Cost Pensions worked?

In 2008 I designed a national sales campaign for Corporate Pensions Advisors called the 'Pensions X-factor' - which asked what components had the biggest impact on saver outcomes. The conclusion was crystal clear - Contribution and effects of Compounding made the biggest impact, not Performance and Charges.

The reason is straightforward, an unaffordable contribution never gets made until it is affordable, typically 12 yrs too late, by which time both performance and charges have far less impact.

In 2020 I wrote privately to Pension Minister Guy Opperman and the FCA Executive in response to CP20/9 - Driving Value for Money in Pensions. I revealed that despite a 75% drop in charges and a record bull market for performance, the average pension shortfall had still risen by 25% from ￡200,000 to ￡250,000 (and in many cases was over ￡300,000).

I had been whistle-blowing since 2013 having launched a new funding framework called 3PPS that focused on the unmet needs of those Most at Risk ('MaR').

I had learned that pension computers were purposefully saying 'No' in order to not expose their lack of Effectiveness to millions of consumers.

Between 2013 and 2017 I had whistle-blown on failures to address major systemic failures with Auto Enrolment ('AE') across the pension industry and UK Government.

Whistle-blowing seriously delayed my mission to expose bad actors, but I am a very patient man and R-Day ?? arrived.

No doubt about it, I am definitely the most dangerous man in pensions [if you're one of the 'Old Guard' who used their power and influence to pervert the course of Justice].

I know where the skeletons are buried, have proof of bad practice across all sectors and now know I had a target on my back because of it.

I continue to be given some 'special treatment' by the 'Old Guard'. I've been humiliated and taught a lesson not to take on the 'big boys' and was told by one legal advisor that I 'must have seriously pissed someone off with connections'.

Good. Because no one is above the Law, they might think they are, but they aren't - in the end the truth always comes out, and history has an uncanny knack of revealing it.

R-Day ?? arrived for UK pensions in October 2021 - as new Laws arrived that allow me to pursue bad actors for knowingly causing Financial Harm to their MaR customers.

Not wishing to be accused of 'entrapment', I publicly gave the UK pensions industry the opportunity to review the Effectiveness of pension computers that say 'No' against the unmet needs of their MaR customers - but inevitably Firms closed ranks and refused to engage.

FinanceForPurpose.com was launched in 2021

After serving the FCA Executive with a sample of MaR customer complaints against known malicious 3rd Parties, and as yet, other unknown bad actors, who had purposefully failed to act in their Best Financial Interest ('BFI') over the last decade, a small team of experts agreed to work on pro-bono terms for FinanceForPurpose.com.

These individuals wanted to establish for themselves the true extent of Financial Harm to their own customers due to pension computers saying 'No' when they could easily have been saying 'Yes'.

The Last Piece of the COBS19.1 Jigsaw

In April 2022, the last piece of a financial jigsaw arrived, allowing the publication of an inaugural Defined Contribution Workplace Pension Compliance Report.

The report once and for all exposes the failures under COBS19.1 that affects the entire UK Pension Industry and an estimated 10 million UK workers.

Founding Contributors reviewed key data for average members who are MaR, comparing Pension computers that say 'No' against those that said 'Yes'.

Troubled by the extent of unnecessary Financial Harm to consumers, collectively the Team have condensed over ￡150,000 of consulting hours into a FREE review for 6m Enterprises and 30m UK workers to learn the truth about the devastating effect of #Pensionwashing on society.

The 10 Year DC Workplace Pension Compliance Review

(click image to view report)

The advancements in Technology can't magically conjure up extra contributions to help reduce the failings of the past, but they can be used to help prevent a future failure that will top ￡2 trillion over the next 10 years if not addressed.

Agnostic Fintech t/as FinanceForPurpose.com is registering as a Community Impact Company ('CIC'), providing access to FREE financial software to reveal the Effectiveness of 22m pension plans, and offering financial support from Impact Investors for those who have suffered Financial Harm.

Restitution Funding - coming October 2022 ??

Presently there are a handful of Impact Investors who have committed to supporting over $1bn of SDG qualifying projects that can help those MaR tackle the failures of the past.

However, come October, when the moratorium on new VfM and BFI laws end, Impact Investors will be allocating up to $500m for Restitution Funding for those aged between 45 and 67 who suffered Financial Harm.

Those in this age group will have suffered the most Financial Harm over the last 12 years, because they were prevented from accessing additional sponsored contributions, which is a confirmed failure under COBS19.1.

In May 2014, my Operations Director spoke with the FCA Small Firms Unit in relation to feedback from Providers, DC Investment Consultants, Pension Trustees and IFA's who believed that COBS19 only applied to Occupational Pensions.

The FCA Small Firms Unit made it crystal clear that they would like to speak to any Firm who thinks that COBS19.1 does not apply to them across all types of sponsored contribution schemes.

Despite going back and sharing the FCA Small Firms Unit's view, each Firm I contacted made excuses not to take action.

It turns out that that there are plenty of Global Impact Investors, who like myself, believe that Firms should now come clean about the Effectiveness of their products and recommendations.

The math does not lie, only those who seek to cover up the math and the truth do.

#TimeForChange