Comment: What Formula One can teach the pensions industry

Surprisingly enough, amidst the screaming engines and screeching tires, I found myself thinking of pensions.

It was not the obvious analogy that we once had Ferrari type pension provision in the UK, but are now being forced to each build our own kit car.

Rather, I thought we could do better to study the current political turmoil. The one engulfing Formula One that is.

As a bit of background for the uneducated, there is a rebellion going on within the sport, with some of the most well known and successful teams threatening to leave because they have decided they don't like proposed new rules which will limit spending on development, a kind of cap on innovation if you like.

It was explained to me that while the two godfathers of the sport, Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley may have helped get the sport where it is today, the teams do not feel beholden to them and believe they have lost the plot.

Hence they feel justified in doing their own thing. If only it were so easy for pension funds to throw off the yoke of incoherent policy.

These teams have decided they know what their fans want and that no one is going to tell them they can't deliver it. So they are sticking two fingers up at their overlords and saying: "If you try and dumb us down we will just go off and do it on our own."

I suspect many stakeholders in our industry wish they could do exactly the same: including the CBI and the people's champion of risk sharing, Hamish Wilson, who say that companies should be left alone to build pension schemes which can they can deliver and which will serve to make them attractive employers.

Unfortunately, that is not really possible now. Robert Maxwell's escapade didn't just rob his pensioners, but condemned all future savers to an over regulated and prohibitively expensive system.

I know there are some fairly serious discussions going on regarding moving pensions off shore to allow companies greater freedom, though what the actual feasibility of this is, I am not sure.

Any way there you have it, lessons we wish we could learn from Formula One. Now, I really must try to unwind a little more at weekend....