Retirement age changes will create work - perhaps a great deal of work?

[xux42]

I am sorry but I have to disagree. However many systems this is hardcoded in to it is still a single change. I can't see how one change will cause any kind of ripple in the amount of work requried? Being in the public sector it probably already has more than enough contractors assigned to it and is a extra bit of work for those already. It isn't anything new so hardly creates a raft of new positions.

There are much bigger things going on with mergers/decoupling and so on that is brand new so will need a new team dealing with than a change to an existing system.

Even if you were right it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to us. It would be done with much cheapness in plenty timings.

Interesting - I had antipated a response along the lines of 'oh well they'll just make us work harder to fit it in'.
My view on that - go work somewhere else. The market is picking up, you don't have to put up with Clients asking for more & more work for the same or less money any more.
Obviously not everyone needs to do this - even 5-10% of freelancers upping sticks will get the "party's over" message through to clients.
Fair enough comments on changes to 65 being factored into many systems. However I can assure you that my currrent client, one of the 10 largest financial institutions in Europe, has no such foresight.

[SueEllen]

As NothernLadUK stated while some products are still being sold with the retirement age set at 65 many companies already knew, were prepared and actually did calculate policies ending at 66-68.

If you go to the Direct Gov website and go to their pensions section you can put in different dates of birth and get the retirement age and dates for those ages.

[northernladuk]

I am sorry but I have to disagree. However many systems this is hardcoded in to it is still a single change. I can't see how one change will cause any kind of ripple in the amount of work requried? Being in the public sector it probably already has more than enough contractors assigned to it and is a extra bit of work for those already. It isn't anything new so hardly creates a raft of new positions.

There are much bigger things going on with mergers/decoupling and so on that is brand new so will need a new team dealing with than a change to an existing system.

Even if you were right it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to us. It would be done with much cheapness in plenty timings.

[xux42]

Well yes it is stating the bleedin' obvious.
Especially to you Life & Pensions boys and girls.

However, some other the knock ons are less obvious, like the fact that some payment and income protection policies (loans & mortgages paid after job loss, unemployment through disability) automatically cancel at age 65.
There are probably huge numbers of hardcoded references to 65 on the back of a myriad business rules out there - 65 has been in force a very long time and seen as a 'constant'. Time to alter code to be table driven?
The current govt. fiddling with retirement dates and the resultant complicated transition arrangements for women (and the prospect of more changes down the line when 66 inevitably proves too young) looks like a big gift to IT providers to me.