So the Olympics are over.
Only the most churlish of individuals would suggest that London’s (and the UK’s) staging of the event has been anything other than a massive success on all levels, and the games have even managed to keep the economic gloom from the front pages for much of the last few weeks.
Yet it should be recognised that winning the games (which is so long ago that it predates the credit crunch) has provided the UK with a recession proof income and activity screen during the entire length of the downturn. That plug has now been pulled.
Add to this the apparent evidence that the Olympics havs failed to provide a boost on the high street either, and you will see that this may well be a bit problem to overcome as we enter the Winter months.
Which is unfortunate, as this dovetails exactly with the equally long run in of Pensions Auto-Enrolment (AE) in the UK. Will a continued downturn impact on opt-outs and company support for pensions? Almost certainly yes. The timing for AE is about as bad as it could be, yet the project continues full steam ahead. It remains to be seen how closely the economy and AE are linked.
Returning to the economy, things do look pretty bleak right now. But the games might just have put the ‘feel good’ back into ‘factor’, and that may help the UK bounce back quicker than the economic evidence would suggest. Let’s hope so, as otherwise many years of planning to tackle the pensions savings gap may have just been wasted.
Best regards
Steve
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