The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association aims to help "everyone achieve a better income in retirement", speaking for all of the workplace pensions community and also supporting savers.
However Tom McPhail, Head of Retirement Policy at Hargreaves Lansdown, said that the NAPF's bid to establish themselves as the pre-eminent voice for the retirement and savings industry is an "unashamed land-grab".
Tom said:
“The financial services industry’s trade bodies seem to be suffering a collective crisis of identity as they all try to reassert their relevance in a very fast changing world. This announcement also comes hard on the heels of Dan Godfrey’s defenestration from the IA and the departure of L&G and Aegon from the ABI; it looks like an unashamed land-grab as the NAPF bids to establish themselves as the pre-eminent voice for the retirement and savings industry. It is also symptomatic of the blurring of the boundaries between pensions and other savings arrangements in the retirement planning landscape. From consumers and policy-makers point of view, the critical question is whether the industry is putting its customers’ interests first.”
Commenting on the rebrand, Joanne Segars, Chief Executive, Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, said:
“Retirement simply doesn’t look like it used to – today people work later in life and they fund their retirement in all sorts of ways. The lines are blurring between work and retirement, between pensions and other forms of saving and between scheme and saver responsibility.
“But some things remain the same – for nearly everyone it takes time, often a lifetime, to build up savings for retirement. And for our members, old and new, from the biggest defined benefit schemes to the smallest and newest automatically enrolled employers, and those schemes’ members, young and old, we want to make that process as straightforward, efficient and clear as we can.
“This is the start of an exciting new period in our Association’s history. Our depth of expertise and credibility have served our members well for over 90 years; and these same strengths allow us to respond positively to the immense changes we’ve seen in our sector in recent times. Our new identity has its roots in our heritage. We’ll still do what we’ve always done – help schemes help their members save confidently for retirement – but our new identity allows us to share our knowledge and expertise directly and readily with more schemes and more savers.
“Of course, we couldn’t do this without the support of our existing members who have encouraged us to be bold and do more. And as we build on our new identity you’ll see us embrace a wider membership and turn our skills and attention to the several ways in which people build up their lifetime savings so we can help them achieve a better income in retirement.”
