Video: REBA New Year Lectures: Employers must push for provider innovation and change

HR directors need to push for innovation from providers with regards to pensions Freedom and Choices, according to Patrick Bloomfield, partner at Hymans Robertson.

Watch video of Patrick Bloomfield’s REBA New Year Lectures session “What is the pensions regulator likely to do?”

Speaking at the REBA New Year Lectures 2016 Bloomfield said HR specialists had to act as active consumers in the market and not be afraid to challenge and change providers. “You need to review, replace, challenge, push and move around. The market will only be efficient if you allow the money to move to the good and the innovative and drive out the bad and the lazy,” he said.

Bloomfield said that with most of the paperwork in place HR directors should instead focus on implementation. “Engage with it now. Raise it up the corporate agenda and put in place the right responsibilities and accountabilities through your team to drive these things through,” he said.

Failure to do so could be catastrophic, according to Bloomfield. “There is an endemic issue in pensions that we have chronic under-saving and the removal of retirement default ages. If you can’t get your employees to retirement with enough money saved and help them make those changes well they will hang around in your workforce and you will have a cascade of issues to deal with.”

He said rather than put off such conversations employers should engage with employees now. “Change the conversation with employees about retirement to a more general conversation about we will help you get a savings plan and along the way we will provide you with the right vehicles. That will put you in a much more resilient position to switch providers in and out so that you can chase innovation,” he said.