In The Case For Reimagining the UK’s Pensions Model, an article in last Friday’s Financial Times, Martin Wolf describes how the pendulum has swung from paternalistic and unaffordable defined pension provision to defined contribution schemes which expose the individual saver to carry the risk.
He suggests a national collective defined contribution scheme. This would reduce costs and increase the resources for effective stewardship of the invested savings. And that’s only half the gain. At a time when people feel mistrust of big companies such a scheme would create a way of making big companies truly accountable to the ordinary savers whose funds are invested in them.
This would be etter stewardship as advocated in the Tomorrow’s Company report bearing the same name. Perhaps then we wouldn’t end up with the hedge funds deciding the future ownership of our largest companies in the hope of a short term gain