I have been pondering the fact that we are coming up to a quarter of the way through the century. When Big Ben chimes in the new year, it will be 2025. How did that happen? And what has changed in the pensions industry so far this millennium?
- In the first week of the year 2000, the pensions industry was relieved that the “millennium bug” that we feared would plague our computer systems turned out to be a damp squib among the new year fireworks. We began the new century grappling with issues such as access to stakeholder schemes and the implications of pension sharing on divorce.
- A few years later, we had the Pensions Act 2004, which unpicked some of the issues introduced by the Pensions Act 1995 that were not working well. For example, the scheme-specific funding regime replaced the unsatisfactory minimum funding requirement. The 2004 Act also introduced The Pensions Regulator − replacing OPRA, which did not have enough powers to have any real impact.