Yesterday, the Minister for Pensions and Financial Inclusion, Guy Opperman, visited PensionBee HQ.
We introduced him to our robots, our human staff, and a PensionBee selfie.
We were delighted to have @GuyOpperman, Minister for Pensions and Financial Inclusion, visiting the PensionBee office today to see how the future of pensions will look like #futureofpensions #pensions #fintech #finance #personalfinance #financialinclusion #moneymanagement pic.twitter.com/Euvsh29FiY
— PensionBee (@pensionbee) December 10, 2018
But we know it’s rare to get a politician’s ear for an hour, so we soon moved on to talking about problems facing the industry - including questions sourced directly from you.
Delighted to welcome our Minister for Pensions and Financial Inclusion @GuyOpperman to @pensionbee shortly! Some of our customers have questions for him (and it’s not too late to submit one!) #FinancialInclusion
— Romi Savova (@romisavova) December 10, 2018
Here’s some of the biggest takeaways.
An end to paper signatures?
Up for discussion were the 21 providers still refusing to accept digital signatures, making life difficult for thousands of PensionBee customers. We’re happy to report that he’s promised to follow up with each of them individually, in fact he’s already penned an article on the topic!
Pension Switch Guarantee?
While our robots and automations have drastically sped up the transfer process for some paper providers, many administrators still take 2 - 3 months to release your funds. We recently wrote to the Minister requesting a consultation on a Pension Switch Guarantee, and it’s something we raised again. Thankfully, the Minister promised that he’ll take our concerns away and come back to us on the issue.
More support for the self-employed?
The self-employed make up 15% of our customers, and the Minister was particularly interested in this statistic. With more and more of us shifting into self-employment there’s a risk that people might slip through the cracks, so it’s positive to see that the government shares our passion to get the self-employed saving. We’ll be doing all we can to support them.
All in all it was positive morning and we hope it’s the first of many. Collaboration between government and pension companies is key to building a better industry.
We’ll keep you updated as things progress!
Thanks for having me today @pensionsbee + @romisavova - fascinating to see the great work you are doing https://t.co/ZvjuEoWLA5
— Guy Opperman (@GuyOpperman) December 10, 2018
