In essence, the service that you offer will have a strong social dimension. However, the big financial players will hate you for offering it and by empowering the little people…..but my guess is that you will take some delight from this!

I have read the gloomy report and I am nor surprised one bit!

The picture in Ireland is very similar to the UK, bombed out pension funds carrying deficits, and these are just the ones still operating,
several have just closed up shop.

When The historically famous Waterford Glass went into liquidation, over 1000 workers lost their pensions….and they
could not do anything via the courts to retrieve the situation. 

I can see from my own self administered fund that the financial intermediaries are only interested in their commission. My pensionfund charges 1% per annum for just looking after a deposit account,literally money for doing nothing!

One issue that always made me angry is that the pension fund managers charged a fee, not only when they grew your pension but also when it fell in value, this is effectively reward for failure!

A friend of mine is a fund manger with one of the largest funds in Ireland, however even he cannot defend the practice of charging fees for declining funds.

I also hear that several large UK banks are now limiting final salaries to when a person joins the organisation for example, say a 55
year old decides to retire in 2050, well going forward, his pension based salary will not be the one he enjoys at 55 but rather his
indexed linked for salary when he joined back in 2020.

With the dramatic changes in demographics due to hit Europe over the next 30 years i.e for every retired person there will be only two
people in the workforce to support him rather than a ratio of 3/4 to one at present. This major change coupled with longer life expectancy, will all place enormous pressure on the state’s ability to be able to offer a state pension  to cover a decent standard of living.

Lets just say I doubt that a seventy year old in 2050 will have the equivalent of the current weekly old age  pension, my guess it will be reduced by at least 33%.

It all adds up to one thing, people need to take control of their finances, they cannot rely on financial intermediaries or the state to
look after them.

In essence, the service that you offer will have a strong social dimension. However, the big financial players will hate
you for offering it and by empowering the little people…..but my guess is that you will take some delight from this!

regards

John

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