A noteworthy aspect of recent pensions reforms has been the willingness of senior civil servants to engage actively with stakeholders. The image of faceless bureaucrats is no longer appropriate and, in person, the top people in Whitehall are generally friendly and receptive to our comments. Unsurprisingly, they're often still middle-aged men, but then so are most of the people they meet at our end.
It’s been particularly pleasing to see the efforts made by Department of Work and Pensions officials to engage with our industry in recent months as they develop proposals for personal accounts. For example, Phil Wynn Owen, director general for strategy and pensions at the DWP, came to Edinburgh recently to meet representatives of insurance companies and fund management groups in a meeting organised by Scottish Financial Enterprise. He was clearly familiar with key points from our responses to the white paper, and also alive to the issues that concern us as we move towards 2012. This confi...
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