A special evening and year

Congratulations to everyone who was shortlisted, and especially our winners. The judges set the bar high, and convincing them in a single submission was no easy task.

A special thanks goes to our judges, listed on page 13, who gave their time and expertise to compare the numerous entries.

This year also marks Pensions Expert’s 20-year anniversary. Set up when the Pensions Act 1995 came into force, its existence shows that pensions have grown in importance, and will only continue to do so, as the recent past has demonstrated.

Two videos, available on pensions-expert.com, show the past 20 years in pensions, as well as asking four experts what they thought the biggest developments will be going forward. The answers ranged from a return of defined benefit in a different form, to the pensions dashboard.

Some broad outlines have been drawn, along which pensions will likely develop in the coming years. Auto-enrolment has brought many into the pension system – but the focus will have to move to contribution levels and entry thresholds.

The pensions dashboard has the potential to revolutionise pension saving and engage a whole new generation with their retirement planning.

And defined contribution scheme and mastertrust consolidation is almost a given, while the prospect for creating scale in the DB universe is much less clear.

Regulation is also set to increase, resulting in ever more complexity for trustees – which in turn will likely push further professionalisation of the trustee role.

Being at the same time highly exposed to government intervention due to its social relevance and to the ups and downs of capital markets, the pensions sector has to withstand many headwinds. But with the calibre of people and amount of knowledge in the sector, there can be no doubt it will be able to deal with the challenges the future will inevitably bring.