Belonging

There's some good thinking from LCP on the Brexit issue this week. In the end it may not be to do with economics, but more to do with 'belonging'.

Do we want to be part of Europe or not? To be on the outside may not be the best place for us in the long term, even if in the short term, the financials are not so bad as they are sometimes portrayed.

I prefer belonging to pulling up metaphorical drawbridges, but as the LCP article suggests, there's a lot of emotion and hot air in this debate. The Churchill quote is apposite:  “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”.

Crossing Pension Borders

The idea of a Pensions Passport is not new, but its time has come. To have one location that holds all your pension information from the multiple employers you have worked for, all in the same format and all readily accessible is something that can be done with today's technology- and should be done.

It should hold all the State pension data together with any and every pension from other sources -all held in the same way, in recognisably the same format.

Management of data has come a long way in a short time. This kind of thing is now achievable. Borders between pension schemes in the UK can be crossed easily in this way and the full information available for advisers means they can concentrate on the advice and not spend endless months gathering the information in the first place. There's a growing enthusiasm in the pensions press for a Pensions Passport and it might just promote enough enthusiasm to get the job done.

Back from India... Pensions still here.... not sure about Greece....

First written 23 November 2011

....or Italy.... or Spain. Even France looks to be under pressure. I was only away in India for three weeks- but a lot is happening in the financial world. And literally the financial WORLD.

We live in a global society. What happens in one market today can shift to another the next day. The speed of financial transactions, the interconectivity around the world markets and the ability to log on anywhere at any time has created globalization. Globalization is a relatively new word and was used primarily to describe the removal of trade barriers. Increasingly it is also being used to describe the speed of travel and the increase in social media and other web technology. Globalization means we can get to everyone from everywhere. And so can the market traders. Countries such as Greece can't hide away. Every action is studied and every move responded to on the market. It is a financial world.