Picking pension provider winners from the auto-enrolment race card is going to be tricky. All agree it is a game changer to create a new market of eight million consumers over five years, but as the starting gun fired last month, forecasting who might break the tape is not straightforward.

The biggest question is how aggressive will be the role of the National Employment Savings Trust, Nest. Set up with a government loan, it was conceived as an answer to market failure, providing a low-cost option for all employers, including those the market would be reluctant to serve - smaller companies with low-paid workers.