Making Pensions Work

Championing fairer pensions is something I’ve always felt strongly about.

Prior to joining LCP, I spent 18 years at Westminster as an MP, including five as Pensions Minister, and I saw first-hand how the pension system had historically been skewed towards men. When we designed the new state pension, I wanted a state pension system where men and women were treated equally - a reality for those retiring today, which wasn’t the case a decade ago.

I was also keen to make sure that the workplace pensions which had increasingly become the preserve of a minority were available to millions more, and especially those on lower incomes. So, as a Minister, I was proud to be able to implement ‘automatic enrolment’ into workplace pensions which has transformed the pensions landscape.

When it was time to move on from my first post-ministerial job, LCP was a great fit. The people I already knew at LCP impressed me by their commitment to doing the right thing as well as by their intellectual firepower. And I was attracted by the freedom and flexibility which our ownership structure gives, compared with being answerable to the remote head office of a global plc.

Five years on since joining LCP, I still feel very privileged that I get to do this, and along with the support of my colleagues, be a force for good in society.

I continue to tap into people’s pension concerns through a weekly column I write for ‘This is Money’, and I am continuously struck by how complicated the system can be. I’ve written upwards of 400 columns for This Is Money, but I don’t have the answers to 400 pensions questions! Fortunately, I’m surrounded by colleagues who are always willing to help and whose encyclopaedic knowledge and deep understanding of legislation help me provide the public with accurate, high-quality information.

Curiosity Changes Lives

At LCP, we have the platform, resources and expertise of talented and committed people to drive meaningful change. While helping the individuals who write in to my column is always rewarding, I often wonder how many other people are impacted. We are intellectually curious as a firm, and that has led to discoveries that have changed lives through exposing systematic errors, influencing policy and making sure these mistakes don’t happen again.

A particular highlight has been our work to unearth state pension errors affecting over 100,000 people, mostly women. My curiosity was piqued when I started to come across individual cases of women who were being underpaid and this prompted me to submit an FOI request to the DWP (Department for Work & Pensions) which revealed the scale of the problem and led to the publication of an LCP ‘On Point’ paper.

With no easy way for people to check for themselves, we created and publicised our own web page, made possible by the brilliant work of our Digital Services team. Since launching we’ve had well over one million visits, helping large numbers of people uncover errors in their pensions and take action to correct them. This work, started in 2020, resulted in the government paying out three-quarters of a billion pounds in back payments over the next four years!

Off the back of this work, we also launched our “Mothers Missing Millions” campaign, which has raised awareness of another £1 billion in missing state pension entitlements for mothers across the UK due to gaps in their National Insurance records.

The Mission Continues

Something that’s currently on the horizon is that I’m supporting a group of retired women with a complaint to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, which you can read more about here. We spotted an issue where these women – and many others – were not aware of a potential uplift to their state pension. Through the evidence gathered, we’ve argued that the failure to make them aware amounts to maladministration, and after three years in the making, the Ombudsman now has all the information she needs and we’re hoping for a verdict later this year.

It’s incredibly rewarding to hear how an increase in pension payments or a lump sum can be transformative to someone’s life. But from a broader perspective, the fact that we drive meaningful change and engage in the wider public interest speaks volumes. It shows our clients, prospects and industry peers that we are a firm that cares. We are not just problem-spotters, but problem-solvers looking to make a positive impact in our markets. Collectively, these are the kinds of meaningful outcomes that make me – and hopefully many others at LCP - feel proud to be a part of.