Investment

With just over four months to go until A-Day, 45% of trustees and employers still have not started adapting their pension scheme administration ready for the changes, claims new research by Mercer.

Prudential will be writing to almost half a million customers who are contracted out of the State second pension (S2P) to say they strongly believe they should contract back in for the 2005/2006 tax year onwards.

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) is "mustering the troops" in an effort to come up with an industry alternative to the National Pensions Savings Scheme (NPSS), and could be up and running by 2007 if approved.

Contingent assets, such as parent group guarantees, will be taken into account by the Pension Protection Fund when calculating a company's risk based levy.

Public understanding of annuities has improved but more work is needed as the debate around pensions hots up, according to the Association of British Insurers.

A Treasury consultation on the regulation of sipps is scheduled to close next week, but pension expert John Lawson queries whether the Treasury will drop its plans following the U-turn on residential property and prohibited assets in self-invested pensions....

The changes in the rules affecting residential property as an investment will result in a reduction in the amount of self invested personal pension (Sipp) business according to new research published today.

The Pensions Regulator has issued a reminder to insolvency practitioners it is now up to the regulator to appoint independent trustees when an employer enters insolvency, not the practitioners.

Jo Smith, consultant at Teamspirit, explains exactly what the pre-Budget report means for pensions ahead of A-Day as well as the implications and remedies now for both clients and intermediaries.

Industry officials say a contributory factor to the Treasury's withdrawal of tax relief on residential property in sipps could be because launch of the computer system to monitor such investments was at least six months behind schedule.