The National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) has today rebranded as the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association.
The trade body said the change in name and focus of its activity reflected the different ways people are now saving for retirement.
Announcing the change at the NAPF’s Annual Conference and Exhibition in Manchester, chief executive Joanne Segars (pictured) said people now provide for their retirement in different ways meaning the organisation needed to look at “lifetime savings” more broadly as opposed to just pension schemes.
She said the organisation would continue to focus on workplace pension schemes but broaden its remit to cover other issues and products such as ISAs, equity-release and long-term care.
The organisation’s membership is also expected to expand beyond workplace pension schemes and their sponsoring employers to include other bodies such as charities, universities and local authorities.
Segars said: “Retirement simply doesn’t look like it used to – today people work later in life and they fund their retirement in all sorts of ways. The lines are blurring between work and retirement, between pensions and other forms of saving and between scheme and saver responsibility.
“But some things remain the same – for nearly everyone it takes time, often a lifetime, to build up savings for retirement. And for our members, old and new, from the biggest defined benefit schemes to the smallest and newest automatically-enrolled employers, and those schemes’ members, young and old, we want to make that process as straightforward, efficient and clear as we can.”
The NAPF said it discussed the change extensively with its board and policy-making councils and ran several consultation groups with members earlier this year to get views and insight from all parts of its membership.
Segars added: “We’ll still do what we’ve always done – help schemes help their members save confidently for retirement – but our new identity allows us to share our knowledge and expertise directly and readily with more schemes and more savers.
“Of course, we couldn’t do this without the support of our existing members who have encouraged us to be bold and do more. And as we build on our new identity you’ll see us embrace a wider membership and turn our skills and attention to the several ways in which people build up their lifetime savings so we can help them achieve a better income in retirement.”
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