The lifetime allowance is hugely unfair on people in private pension schemes

The lifetime allowance on pension pots isn’t fair. It massively favours people on defined benefits pensions, and penalises those in defined contributions schemes.

150320-pensions

Some pensioners will have much nicer retirements than others

The recent cut in the lifetime allowance (LTA) is maddening for a very long list of reasons. I will be writing more on it next week and you can read articles by me and by James Ferguson from last year (the last time it was cut) on why we really, really hate the LTA.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.