A 48 minute listen

In our latest podcast featuring guest host Roy Mcloughlin, associate director at Cavendish Ware, he chats with his friend, long-time West London football rival Tom Selby, AJ Bell’s newly named head of retirement policy. Congratulations on the promotion!

Former Money Marketing journalist Tom tells Roy of his shift from the technical long grass of the trade press to being the person who now hears first-hand from the ‘real world’ consumer, gaining the client view of the UK pensions landscape and what it represents.

“It’s always the case with our sector that scandals involving one or two advisers affect people’s perceptions of the entire advice industry…”

Passionate about the need to overhaul the “out of date” income multipliers that create huge disparity between DC and DB savers’ lifetime allowances and the need to keep talking about the “insane” complexities of the pension tax system and the problems it brings, Tom’s enthusiasm for building a better pensions landscape is palpable.

“I think that the fact that we’ve got three versions of an annual allowance or lifetime allowance is absolutely barking mad…. if you sat down and designed the pension tax system from scratch, you would have to be a maniac to come up with that. Nobody would come up with that. It’s just ludicrous.”

That inherent complexity around pensions, he says, drives the lack of take-up: “You have to explain all the rules to people before you can even get into the engagement piece…”

The pair also talk about the challenges of meeting the retirement savings needs of the self-employed, addressing gender disparity – and other imbalances between demographic groups and how to talk to children about savings in a way that truly resonates. Just don’t get him started on England penalty shoot-outs….