Call for Papers
NEST Annual Forum 2013 - Looking Forward to Retirement

"How can DC pension providers encourage and enable those approaching retirement to make the best possible decisions on taking their money out of their retirement pots?"

INTRODUCTION: The National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) is preparing for its next Annual Forum, to take place on June 24th 2013, at a venue in London (tbc).

The 2012 Forum brought together international academics, key industry figures, politicians and policy makers, consumer groups and members of the press to discuss the theme of establishing the saving habit - particularly in groups who have had little experience of saving before.

Automatic enrolment has already begun for larger UK employers. The 2013 Forum takes place against this background of automatic enrolment employer duties in the UK already in place for larger employers. The majority of industry solutions from collection of contributions to investment approaches are already in place and for the most part fixed. This makes 2013 an ideal time to consider some of the longer term developments required to ensure the reforms are a success.

The policy of automatic enrolment is built on harnessing inertia in a market which has to date not engaged with savings products. There are a number of challenges to making automatic enrolment work including building adequacy of savings, and communicating with a new wave of pension savers, many without any previous experience of pensions.

2013 is therefore a good opportunity to engage leading thinkers on issues around planning for retirement and accessing savings at and throughout retirement.

The forum will focus on the subject of purchasing a retirement product with the accumulated savings (decumulation).

Specifically the forum will seek to create greater understanding of the issues this new group of savers will encounter when converting their pension fund into a retirement income, cash sum or transfer including:
- emotional and behavioural issues
- choices available to them, and market barriers

We welcome the submission of high quality research contributions in this area from the fields of behavioural finance, psychology and finance theory.

KEY FOCUS AND TOPICS FOR THE FORUM: The key focus of the 2013 Annual NEST Forum will be to address the question of "How can DC pension providers encourage and enable those approaching retirement to make the best possible decisions on taking their money out of their retirement pots?

We expect to discuss insight and evidence from pension savings initiatives both in the UK and internationally. While automatic enrolment and the UK market is our starting point, we are just as interested in how other markets different in their structure and regulatory regimes have responded to this challenge.

TOPICS: Topics suitable for the panel include, but are not limited to, the following areas:
- How should policy makers, regulators and DC pension providers better prepare people to move from the saving and working elements of their career, into retirement and drawing down their savings.
- How can these agents influence individuals to better engage with their future to encourage better decision making from people in the 10-15 years before they retire as well as at retirement itself?
- What are the triggers - either in terms of distance from retirement, or life events, when pension providers, employers and policy makers should consider intervening to help better decision-making?
- Can earlier engagement with retirement options help lead to better outcomes?
- What is the likely future of annuities and other retirement products and how is the market likely to innovate in the short, medium term and long term
- What evidence is there on how framing of options to pensions savers influences what they decide to do with their money and when to decumulate?
- What evidence is there on the best ways to maximise effectiveness of on-line tools to present options and choices for those approaching retirement? What are their advantages and disadvantages?
- How do different investment approaches in the years approaching retirement impact on individual behaviour and individual outcomes?
- Future of retirement as a concept - how successful will policies aimed at smoothing transitions from work to retirement likely to be, and what impact does that have on approaches to investment, communications and decision making tools?
- How will the policy settlement develop? Will it make sense in the future for NEST and other large providers to bulk buy annuities, self annuitise, or have default annuity approaches?

ABOUT NEST: The law in the UK on workplace pension provision is changing. From October 2012, the Government introduced reforms meaning that employers will have to enrol most of their workers into a workplace pension scheme that meets or exceeds certain government standards. They also need to make a minimum contribution for many of these workers. NEST has been established by the UK Government to ensure there will be an easy to use, low-cost pension scheme available to all UK employers to help them meet duties of automatic enrolment.. NEST is especially designed for working people who are new to pension saving and are on lower to middle incomes.

PUBLICATION: We encourage the submission of papers or presentations by researchers and practitioners.

Papers submitted for the NEST Annual Forum will be considered for presentation at the event and publication on the National Employment Savings Trust website. Along with presentation of the papers paper authors may also be invited to become panellists for discussion sessions during the event. Reimbursement of expenses by the Forum organisers for those invited to present their papers will be considered, subject to limitations, though respondents should note that NEST is a non departmental public body, that operates as a not for profit trust.

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Authors are invited to submit electronically (MS Word or PDF format) a paper or presentation. The first page of the paper should contain the title, name of each author, address, telephone, and E-mail address. All submitted papers must be accompanied by an abstract explaining the contribution of the paper in no more than 100 words.

DEADLINE: The deadline for submissions is Monday 22nd April 2013. Authors will be notified by tbc.

CORRESPONDENCE: Address for correspondence and submissions to:

Ric Tizard
National Employment Savings Trust
St. Dunstan's House
201-211 Borough High Street
London SE1 1JA, UK
Email: ric.tizard@nestcorporation.org.uk

Ric Tizard, Head of Research and Insight, NEST, 15.03.13