Directive to cause "significant disruption"

IPE recently reported this news item, which is based on an online survey of the UK Society of Pension Consultants. 52% of respondents indicated that the DIrective's implementation had caused significant disruption.

I just enquired about the background to this news item. The press release is based on 31 responses to a one question online survey sent to the SPC's membership base of about 130 members. While this is a pretty good response ratio, it is notoriously difficult to interpret. According to John Mortimer of SPC, those significant disruptions are attributable to the UK implementation of the Pensions Directive, and they are not indicative of a generic problem. Mr. Mortimer quoted a UK specific issue with foreign secondments of employees which, if handled wrongly, can cause the secondment to be treated as a cross border case the consequence of which would be that the IORP in question needs to be fully funded. That might indeed work out to be a severe disruption - but for the time being, this news item's impact is limited.