The government has announced it’s to abolish the default retirement age at 65. What will that mean for older employees?
Many people want to work beyond the age of 65, but under the current rules employers don’t have to let them. That’s planned to change in October 2011.
The government plans to make it illegal for companies to force someone to retire at 65. The default retirement age was introduced in 2006 to stop companies from forcing out workers before 65, but it doesn’t help those who want to work beyond that age. The government announced its plans to abolish the default retirement age in the emergency Budget in June and said the new rules would apply from next April. Now it says that the rules will be phased in over a six-month period.
The government says it wants to bring forward raising the state pension age to 66. The question is, when?
The state pension age for women is increasing from 60 to 65 in the next ten years, but the government wants it to rise to 66.
One of the changes announced in the Budget that I’m sure will concern many - particularly women - is George Osborne’s plans to bring forward an increase in the state pension age to 66. Although the state pension age for men could rise in just over five years, an increase would affect women more as a higher number of women than men rely on the state pension as the bedrock of their retirement. The state pension age is already being increased from 60 to 65, phased in over a ten-year period from 2010 to 2020. What could this latest announcement mean?
The FSA is warning people about the risk of unregulated investments in self invested personal pensions or SIPPs.
The FSA says it believes consumers are being advised to invest some of their retirement money into unregulated investments through a self invested personal pension.
Mexican golf courses, Bulgarian forests and country clubs may not seem like your average pension fund, but that’s what the regulator the Financial Services Authority is warning that some people may have invested their pension money in through self invested personal pensions (or SIPPs). Self invested personal pensions give you much more freedom about what you invest your pension fund in than ordinary private pensions, but the FSA is concerned that some people are taking on far more risk than they realise and they could lose their money.
