Notes on week 42 of 2025

also known as week notes,
covers 13 to 19 Oct 2025,
started 24 October 2025,
published 13 February 2026.

The Pensions Regulator

Pensions UK Conference

This week I spent 3 days at the pensions UK annual conference in Manchester.

Excellent merch

There was a lot of well-known companies that had spent a lot of money on their stands. One in particular had a pizza chef that was working from midday, which of course I went to and had several helpings of.

In particular, a lot of stands had notebooks and pens which were just awesome. Towards the end of the last day I do the last minute merch run and got a load of books booklets that hadn't been taken.

Lawyer, turned hacker

Over lunch on the second day I got chatting to someone who turned out to be a trained lawyer, who had a deep interest in artificial intelligence.

They were using AI to help with Investments, and had made a 35% gain over the previous month using the advice the AI had given them.

It's really fascinating to see people using AI to enrich their lives, but obviously word of warning that your Investments can go down as well as up.

Mental health

Awesome chillout room

During the pensions UK conference there were a couple of meditation sessions run by someone that had been hired in.

I found them really useful to centre myself whilst doing sorry in between doing a lot of peopling at the conference.

The same person is also set up a quiet room on the ground floor entrance to the a lot of where the seminars were being held.

At the end of the last day, my colleague Marion and I sat in the quiet room and had a nice chilled out conversation about our work and what next and lots of other stuff.

Person who'd sets up the room also joined in and we had a chat about their work and different ways they try to help clients, which was really useful.