Dear Mr Webb,
In fact, you were the chief meteorologist all along, orchestrating the heavenly rumbles and raining lightning bolts down on the complacent and conceited pensions industry.
It’s been said across the media that you have unleashed a pensions revolution. That you certainly have, and then some.
If there’s one thing that doesn’t stack up, it’s your claims that the reforms have merely given a ‘jolt’ to the annuities industry.
Oh come on. You know very well that that’s like telling the Russian Czar in 1917 that the Bolsheviks at the gates of the Winter Palace would simply ‘like a word’.
But we’ll let you off that one. That’s what happens when you’re in political credit.
Anyway, I must congratulate you and your department for having the courage to take such a brave, and utterly unforeseen, course of action.
The guiding principles of the reforms you have introduced - greater choice, transparency and flexibility for pension savers - are compelling and noble.
Your changes are empowering pension savers rather than patronising them, as has been the case under so many governments for so long.
You have given ownership of pensions back to the people, who are, after all, their rightful owners - and in doing so you have brought about fundamental, irreversible change.
I have always thought that one of the biggest problems of all pension regimes, to date, is that people have felt the moment they invest money in a pension, it stops being their money.
It feels like they’re giving it away. And so they don’t invest.
At a stroke, these changes have removed that psychological hurdle. Handled correctly, there is no doubt they could be a hugely liberating force for the pensions industry - as they should encourage more people to start saving for the future.
And as you well know, it’s better to have saved and lost than never to have saved at all.
As for the Lamborghini, I’ll see you down the showroom when the time comes. Maybe if we both buy one on the same day we’ll get a discount? Or at least a free cap.
Monte Carlo here we come!
John Fox is managing director of Liberty SIPP
