Action by The Pensions Regulator (TPR) to ensure savers receive value from their pension schemes is helping drive market consolidation and resulted in a fine against a corporate trustee.
Regulations, which came into force in October 2021, require trustees of schemes with less than £100 million in assets to undertake a more detailed assessment of value for members than larger schemes.
Those failing to deliver value must set out a plan to improve or transfer members to a better-value scheme.
TPR launched an exercise to ensure compliance with rules over value for member assessments.
The initiative is already helping to drive consolidation, with 16% of schemes from the pilot reporting that, having concluded their schemes do not offer good value, they have opted to wind them up.
Following the initial pilot, TPR will be scrutinising information from defined contribution scheme returns with the potential for fines to be issued for non-compliance.
TPR has already issued a fine of £12,500 against a corporate trustee. This penalty will be included in TPR’s next compliance and enforcement bulletin, covering July to December 2023, which will be published later this spring. Further fines will be issued shortly.
Mel Charles, TPR’s Interim Director for Frontline Regulation, said: “Where trustees are found to be in breach of their duties on value, we’ll want to understand how they’ll improve. But, if they can’t or won’t, we expect them to transfer members to a better-value scheme and consider winding up their scheme.
“It is encouraging that our initiative has shown schemes are now actively choosing to wind up in the face of the new regulations.”
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