What is a Pensions Black Hole?

Regular stories appear in the news these days about organisations with Pension Shortfalls. Recent names in the press in this bracket have been The Royal Mail, British Airways, the BBC and ITV, but there have been loads of others.

Shortfalls have arisen because we are living longer and the funds, which pay our pensions, don't have enough money in them.

The crisis has its roots back in the Thatcher years when then Chancellor Norman Lamont restricted the amounts companies could put into their pension funds - the Government thought profits, and thus taxes, were being suppressed by over generous pension contributions! That coupled with the fund actuaries getting their sums wrong on our life expectancy have contributed to the void - the current recession and devaluation in equities has not helped matters.