We are fast approaching a rather macabre milestone, that of the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which will occur next Friday.

The conflict itself seems to show no sign of stopping and has had far reaching impacts across the entire globe, and the pensions industry has been no exception.

The cost-of-living crisis, due to, amongst other factors, the Ukrainian war, continued to make headlines this week with the news that inflation reached 10.1 per cent in January 2023, showing signs of slowing down from the 10.5 per cent in December.

This slowdown in inflationary growth was described as “good news” for pension schemes as it “should provide them with more stability”, although industry experts noted that the effects of high levels of inflation are “still being felt by some DB schemes”.

Concerns over the impact of rising prices on savers have also persisted, as research from LCP revealed that more than half of employers have had employees request to reduce pension contributions as the cost-of-living crisis pushed pension savings down the financial priority list.

The crisis was shown to be affecting different groups of people differently as research discovered that just under one in five renter households are on track for a moderate income in retirement, compared to the over 54 per cent of their homeowning counterparts.

It wasn’t just bad news, however, as it was also announced that Fidelity International formed a partnership with Plain Numbers to support workplace pension members’ understanding of their finances.

This week also saw updates on another big issue of our time, that of climate change as it was announced that Phoenix Group has assigned £338m to multi-asset climate solution, while Smart Pension has added J.P. Morgan Asset Management Carbon Transition Global Equity ETF to its sustainable default growth fund.

This week was also a busy week for pension dashboards as the Pensions and Administration Standards Association (Pasa) warned that the lack of test dashboards has made it “near impossible” for the pensions industry to feedback on dashboards’ design proposals.

This was followed by a call for “regulatory certainty” on dashboards as soon as possible.

Whilst many people may still be being affected by the cost-of-living crisis, the slowdown of inflation does at least provide hope that there is an end to the crisis soon.

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