popay, you are right about that. There is one thing that can and has to be changed though: we must be able to change our portfolio online with a click of the mouse.
Imagine that on a wednesday the stocks start to go down bigtime. You might get a bit concerned about your pension when things are heading south, and try to save some of the eggs in your basket, so you get your transfer form out, put all your equities in a safe haven, e.g. cash, fax the form to our friend S. at HR, and.... nothing happens until monday. Actually, saturday, S. comes back to work after his well deserved weekend, finds the fax you sent him 2 days ago and forwards the swap of funds to ML or Fidelity... where people are enjoying their weekend now until monday.
This could all be solved by just designing a decent website where we can manage our funds ourselves. It would still not be ideal, but at least you have control over your money, something that is completely lacking today.
MR8