Autumn Statement reaction from Rutherford Wilkinson technical director Mike Gordon:
Reduced Money Purchase Allowance
“If you’re already drawing down your pension, and planned on that basis to put £10k in, rather than £4k, to your money purchase scheme, the reduction may feel a bit harsh, with only some breathing space until April 2017. However, I can see the point in terms of needing some delineation between accumulation and decumulation, but it would have been better for the allowance to have been introduced at this level originally. People are more likely to think carefully about making withdrawals from their money purchase scheme in future as a result of this reduction. However, the only tinkering to pensions is this change, which is positive!”
NS&I Investment Bond
“On the NS&I investment bonds, if the maximum investment is £3,000, it is hardly rewarding for investors, with only £66 a year able to be earned in interest. While the Chancellor said two million people are due to benefit, we must remember the NS&I website crashing due to demand with pensioner bonds and so we shouldn’t hold our breath on these.”
Consultation on pension cold calls
“The problem of scammers would only be partially reduced by banning cold-calling, which is unlikely to be respected by many scammers, particularly those based abroad. Surely it must be possible from a technology perspective for the telephone providers to be able to or obliged to identify such calls and block them at source? I am sure they are able to identify who to send the phone bill to for the call, so they could create a system to block them. Of course, people would still be reliant on the system to work.”
