Employee Benefits

UK - Consultants are split over whether employers should adopt "knee-jerk" initiatives to avoid the government's proposed lifetime savings limit.

UK - Employers are abandoning defined benefit schemes because staff do not see a link between their pension and salary levels, new research shows.

UK - Administrators should focus on meeting member expectations rather than faster turnaround times, delegates at the recent Pension Show heard.

UK - Thomsons Online Benefits has released a new flexible, web-based technology solution handling clients' requirements "faster and cheaper".

GERMANY - Chancellor Gerhard Schroder had no alternative in ordering Germany's first post-war pensions freeze, according to industry experts.

UK - A tailored online administration platform is being launched by Aegon UK to help IFAs seize business in the burgeoning flexible benefits market.

NETHERLANDS - PGGM, the e48bn scheme for health and social workers, has fired a scathing attack on the Dutch government, claiming that up to 30,000 of its members could be "seriously disadvantaged" if plans to tax early retirement go ahead.

UK - Gartmore Investment Management's flexible benefits package, Gartmore Plus, was introduced last year in a bid to tailor employee benefits more closely to what staff wanted.

SCOTLAND- Mercer Human Resource Consulting is to show Scottish employers how to move from defined benefit to defined contribution pension provision.

HUNGARY - Hungarian pension funds achieved up to nine times the real return rate in 2002 compared with previous year, according to preliminary data from Mercer Human Resource Consulting.