Editor's blog: At today's Work and Pensions Select Committee, pensions minister Steve Webb was keen to underline the role of his department in the Budget's smashing of the conventional annuity market. 

The minister pointed to a 1999 parliamentary debate on annuities to demonstrate his long-held belief in greater flexibility at retirement. "At that point I raised concerns about the restrictions on people using their annuities and freeing them up so I've got form on this one," he said.

In front of committee MPs, Webb went into depth about the department's involvement, as well as pointing out those that had accentuated his behind-the-scenes role. At one point he even described people stopping in the street to shake his hand.

"We as a department were involved in scheduling the documents, the freedom of choice in pensions document... we were very closely considered in that document and shaping it, so it was very much a joint endeavour.

"It absolutely wasn't all my own work as some people very generously suggested." 

I suspect the opposite on this. As I've said before, the reforms clearly have the stamp of Conservative individualism, and the comments in this light can be seen as politically clever: playing up his performance while appearing to play it down.

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Much has been made of the gains available for pension schemes willing to buy those assets that banks – constrained by tougher capital requirements – are less able to access.

Editor's blog: On Wednesday May 7 we will be playing host to pensions policymakers, decision-makers and industry experts for a half-day conference at the Financial Times, as part of our Leadership of Pensions series. Delegate passes are still available, so don't miss out!

You would have to have been sitting in a nuclear bunker to have missed the colossal amount of regulatory and legislative requirements being lumped onto trust-based and contract-based schemes – from the regulator's defined contribution code to the government's scheme quality requirements – and this event will provide practical case studies and discussion of how that burden can be carried.

All details on the event are here, and suffice to say the great and good of the DC pensions world will be in attendance, the day kicking off with pensions minister Steve Webb and his shadow, Gregg McClymont.

It will finish with a discussion of the regulatory outlook, featuring the Association of British Insurers' Otto Thoresen and the Pensions Regulator's executive director for DC, Andrew Warwick-Thompson.

In between, we will have discussions on investment, member engagement and governance, with scheme representatives including HSBC's Lesley Alexander and Kingfisher's Dermot Courtier.

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Editor's blog: The Pensions Regulator has issued a report on how it resolved non-compliance with auto-enrolment by soft-furnishings company Dunelm, the watchdog is keen to set an example for future employers.

Auto-enrolment naysayers finally got their fix of medium-sized employers struggling with the reform, with the company eventually making up £108,000 in lost contributions for its monthly payroll, and £35,000 for its four weekly payroll. Its breaches were as follows:

• It failed to enrol members of the four-weekly payroll on time, auto-enrolling them a month late.
• It similarly failed to enrol some members of the monthly payroll on time, enrolling them three months late.
• It had not paid to the pension provider "a significant level of contributions" as a result of these breaches.

The company was introduced to the world of compliance notices, unpaid contribution notices and statutory inspections, and its representatives were reportedly "fully cooperative", even highlighting breaches themselves. But early industry reaction has questioned the regulator's apparent reliance on the company's calculations of its contributions shortfall.

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To annuitise or not to annuitise? The debate rumbles on, with successive reports predicting a fair deal of doom for the vendors of the old normal.

The “saver’s Budget” sounded a starting bell in the frankly lethargic DC investment market – which default strategy would win the argument and, more importantly, the flows?