Midland / HSBC "clawback"

fwor

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Shareholders voted against (96%) the proposed resolution at the AGM on Friday. Difficult to see on what grounds any further challenge can be made. As there's nothing illegal in the Pension Schene enforcing their own scheme rules.

Thanks for the update. It doesn't surprise me at all - TBH I wouldn't expect shareholders to be much in favour, as they would I guess prefer company profits to be spent on paying dividends than on giving ex-employees extra pension payments.

westv

fwor wrote: »

You could look at it that way, but as already explained, she joined Midland straight out of school, and there genuinely would have been no point in her examining the finer points of the scheme - it was "free", and there was no option to negotiate different terms anyway.

It's a bit too simplistic to call it "sticking your head in the sand". Where someone has just gone from school to their first job, there can be a lot more important things to think about than what might happen in fifty years time.

Yes but what about all the other years she was there?

fwor

westv wrote: »

Yes but what about all the other years she was there?

I'm not sure what useful point you are trying to make here.

Perhaps you are saying that a "normal" 18-25 year old should have been regularly re-reading the terms of their "free" non-contributory pension scheme - a scheme that they would clearly have had no control over?

To that extent, perhaps she was not "normal", but telling her that 30+years later doesn't really help her in any way at all!

Malthusian

fwor wrote: »

It's a bit too simplistic to call it "sticking your head in the sand". Where someone has just gone from school to their first job, there can be a lot more important things to think about than what might happen in fifty years time.

No-one is saying she should have read the terms in detail when she was 18. She should however have read through the terms once she got to the stage she was planning for her retirement. Looking at the terms of the pension years after you have signed the retirement forms and drawn it, with the result that it becomes a surprise that the pension drops after State Pension Age, is irresponsible at any age.

This is just a variant of WASPI. Step 1. Shout the word "unfair" a lot Step 2. ????? Step 3. Free money!

There are some DB schemes where you can elect for a stepped or non-stepped pension. i.e. you can have 1) an initially higher pension that drops after SPA or 2) a lower pension that stays the same before and after SPA. (So 2) is lower than 1) before SPA and higher after.) Does anyone seriously think that somebody should be able to take option 1) and then claim they weren't told it would go down after SPA and have the decrease waived, meaning they get more than someone who read the terms and took option 2)?

No, which means this comes down yet again to "I am a poor feeble woman and couldn't possibly be expected to understand pensions, so other people (50% of whom will be women) should give me free money".

The campaign doesn't even pretend it isn't nonsense. "HSBC needs to urgently end the injustice of its clawback policy which is causing many people to have to choose between food or fuel in their retirement." Except it isn't, because the decrease in the DB pension is replaced by State Pension. So if they will have to choose between food or fuel after SPA, they were already having to choose between food or fuel before SPA, which means that it has absolutely nothing to do with the decrease.

fwor

I think you must have missed the point that she left the bank when she was perhaps 25 years old. At that time she would have been getting married, moving to a new job and buying a new house - roughly at the same time.

It's easy for people to say "she should have been planning for her retirement" but at that stage in her life, it was not a priority.

Perhaps some female employees would try to present it as a gender issue, but in this case she isn't. She left the company and pretty much forgot about the pension.

But I agree with the point that the pension would have been designed from the outset with this structure built-in, and to claim that it's "unfair" really doesn't make sense.

Thrugelmir

fwor wrote: »

It's easy for people to say "she should have been planning for her retirement" but at that stage in her life, it was not a priority.

Had all the time since though. Every year since I started work I've contributed to a pension scheme in one form or another. However small it be on a monthly basis. I considered it to be a priority.

fwor

Thanks, it's helping her a lot to have lots of people telling her what she should have done at some point in the past.

Thrugelmir

fwor wrote: »

Thanks, it's helping her a lot to have lots of people telling her what she should have done at some point in the past.

We all have to accept responsibility for the choices we make throughout our own lives. Little point in looking back though.

xylophone

I have to admit that when I was told that I would be automatically enrolled in a non contributory pension scheme I simply thought it "a good thing" - luckily, this particular scheme ended abatement back in the eighties.

Malthusian

fwor wrote: »

It's easy for people to say "she should have been planning for her retirement" but at that stage in her life, it was not a priority.

But it is a priority at some point before several years after you have already filled in the retirement forms and taken your pension.