No news is good news on the pension front

27 November 2017

Pensions experts have been predicting that the government will reform the current tax relief system and it was widely expected that this would be announced in the budget. However, with Brexit quite rightly at the forefront of Philip Hammond’s speech, pensions were nowhere to be seen.

Personally, I believe this is very good news as, in my opinion, any potential changes to pension tax relief such as a single flat rate for all savers, the removal of salary sacrifice for pension contributions, reductions in the Annual Allowance and Lifetime Allowance would have been to the detriment of pension savers in the UK.

Although we can breathe a sigh of relief now, given the suggested economic benefits of revising the current tax relief system for pensions, I’d say we can’t rule out changes in the not too distant future.

Stuart Price, partner and actuary at Quantum Advisory.