Until the Budget is over and done with and 30 October is behind us, the chancellor’s speech is dominating thinking and inhibiting planning.

But there will be a day after. It is to this slightly longer term outlook that this update turns its attention. And there is a lot to get through – after the dog days of the last government, the new government has turned up with plans, plans, plans…

The government’s North Star is economic growth. Yet the Treasury can’t just pull a big lever labelled ‘growth’, hence the expectation of a ‘get all the bad news out and move on sharpish’ kind of Budget.

Away from the contents of the red Budget Box, here are some of the things on the government’s to-do list set to affect the financial services sector:

A new Industrial Strategy

This focuses on supply side reforms to stimulate the economy, such as investment in skills and in physical and digital infrastructure (welcome news to anyone who has tried to access train Wifi, or indeed in many cases to simply catch a train).

The government’s position on this is it’s going to create the context for firms to invest and grow. In return, they’ll be expecting firms to deliver on things like workplace training, workers’ rights and yes, maybe one day soon, increased minimum pension contributions.

Collective Defined Contribution schemes

The Department of Work and Pensions still hasn’t given up on the idea of commercial, multi-employer CDC schemes.

This mythical beast holds out the promise of a new way of doing defined contribution pensions, improving returns and absolving members of the uncertainties of investment and longevity risk. Sceptics argue it is all fool’s gold and will never work. To be continued…

The Pensions Review

In its first phase, the Pensions Review is focusing on productive finance and pension scheme consolidation, followed by adequacy of provision in the second phase.

Once the Treasury has worked out what it wants doing, including default consolidation of dormant small pots and default decumulation, this will all get shovelled into a Pensions Bill in the first half of next year.

This all has the potential to be highly disruptive to the sector in the longer term; not as seismic as the pension freedoms earthquake of 2014/15, but just as consequential in the end.

What about the FCA?

As well as bedding in Consumer Duty, the regulator is busy…

• exploring the next stages of the Advice Guidance Boundary Review, on which we may hear more before the end of the year
• mulling over the Retirement Advice Thematic Review
• consulting on workplace pensions’ value for money.

The VFM consultation is currently in danger of sinking in a data swamp. As and when it comes to pass though, it presents the tantalising possibility of genuine transparency and accountability of workplace pension performance.

It would not be unreasonable to expect this work to percolate down to retail pensions as well in time, so worth keeping an eye on for all sorts of reasons.

Overall, you can’t fault the new government for its desire to get things done.

It is aided and abetted by an FCA which itself has been through a bit of a shake-up in recent years, but now appears to have a clear sense of how it wants to shape the sector it regulates.

Interesting times ahead.

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