Over two nights this week, the great and the good- and the musically talented- of the pensions industry have been gathering at a night club on Oxford Street for a battle of the bands. (Well done to Towers Watson who won on the night I was there. Although I though the Standard Life lot pushed them close with a great version of ‘Smoke on the Water’!)
And pensions really does rock! What started for me 34 years ago in the Clerical Medical & General Insurance Society pensions legal department has served me well. In those days, pensions really was a bit of a ‘backwater’, but I stuck with it, saw the light and got out of the legal department (apologies to lawyers reading this) and have enjoyed a great career. What I saw as ‘boring’ at the start of my career has ended up as anything but- challenging, political, front page, but never boring!
The reason for writing this then? It’s not going to be so much of my career from April. I will be stepping down as Pensions & Benefits Director at Mars and stepping into something new. A bit of church work, a bit of charity work in India, finishing my third book, a part time MA in Theology.... and, I hope, keeping a foot in the pensions industry with a trustee position or two. Anyway, no one is allowed to use the ‘R’ word. No retirement yet.
So thank you pensions, you really do rock. And thank you to all my friends and colleagues who have worked with me over the years at Clerical Medical, Bowring & Layborn, Swiss Life, EMI. EMAP, Brambles, ICI and Mars. Here’s to pensions continuing to rock (slightly more gently) for a good few years yet.....
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