The Pensions Triple Lock: broken promises!There have been a thousand-and-one articles written since the pandemic on people’s changing attitude to work. Millennials and the generations that follow them – so we are told – want different things from work. Flexibility, the option of working from home and, above all, to work for a company that shares their values: that values purpose as much as profit.
It is not surprising then that we are hearing more and more from companies about ESG – their environmental, social and governance credentials. What really is ESG? And can it possibly matter as much as profits? After all, without profit you cannot pay your employees: you cannot re-invest in the business and you cannot pay dividends to your shareholders.
You could argue that companies’ concerns with ESG are not new. The origins could be traced back to the 1800s when religious groups such the Quakers and Methodists ran their businesses according to socially responsible principles, and established socially responsible investment guidelines for their followers.
More recently – in 2006 – the United Nations launched a set of six investment principles which perhaps started the incorporation of ESG into mainstream investment practice. Simply put ESG criteria judge how a company meets its environmental obligations, how it manages relationships with employees, suppliers, customers and the local community and the principles, composition and behaviour of the leadership team.
By the same token ESG investing looks to invest in companies that espouse those values. This, in some ways, brings us back to the generations mentioned above. Millennials and their successors not only want to work for companies that share their values, they want to invest in them as well. Often they want to go one step further, and make investments that have a positive and measurable social and economic impact.
“Impact investing,” as it has been dubbed, is now the fastest growing area of responsible investment. The World Economic Forum estimated that $1tn (£730bn) of assets were committed to impact investing in 2020, with the sector forecast to grow at $250bn (£183bn) annually.
It is small wonder then, that companies are paying more and more attention to meeting their ESG obligations. Of course the bottom line remains important – although many of us remember Uber famously being valued in the billions despite saying that it may never make a profit – but now both investors and employees are using other criteria to judge companies. You will hear a great deal more about ESG and impact investing in the months and years to come.
The Pensions Triple Lock: broken promises!
Wednesday, October 6th, 2021At the last General Election the Conservative Government made a promise, a so-called “manifesto commitment.” That pledge is commonly known as the “pensions triple lock:” that the state pension will be increased each year by annual price inflation, average earnings growth or a guaranteed 2.5%, whichever is the greater.
For pensioners this has been good news. It meant that pensions would keep pace with wage growth and inflation and, if both those were low in one particular year, pensioners would be a little better off.
That, of course, was before the pandemic, the enormous cost of it and the financial juggling the Chancellor will need to do to pay for all the support measures put in place, and the consequent sharp rise in Government borrowing.
In early September, as had been widely rumoured, the Government broke not one, but two manifesto pledges. It increased national insurance to pay for social care and, crucially for pensioners, it suspended the triple lock for a year.
This was obviously bad news, and the move begs an immediate question. If the Government has suspended it for one year, could it do it for another year? After all, the bill for Covid-19 is not going to be paid any time soon.
Unsurprisingly, a poll showed that two-thirds of pensioners were against the suspension. Interestingly though, the research carried out by ComRes suggested that the move would be largely forgiven by the next General Election.
In this instance the triple lock has been watered down and become a “double lock,” with the wages element removed. But as we hinted above, we might well see other elements removed in the future, now that the precedent has been set. Many commentators expect inflation to hit 4% by the end of the year, could the Government remove that element in the future, too?
It will be interesting to see what Chancellor Rishi Sunak has to say when he delivers his Budget speech on October 27th. He will presumably be setting out plans for starting to repay the enormous cost of the pandemic. Given the cost of servicing all the new borrowing the Government is vulnerable to a rise in interest rates, and nothing, including the triple lock, can be ruled out. The next Election is not due until December 2024 and the Government may gamble on the pandemic and the measures taken to counter it being a distant memory by then.
The uncertainty for pensioners means that your ongoing financial planning becomes more important than ever. It is important that your existing savings and investments are arranged as tax-efficiently as possible and that you make use of all your available allowances. All this is an integral part of our regular review meetings with you, but any clients with immediate questions on the ending of the triple lock should not hesitate to get in touch with us.
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