Pensions: what's new this week - December 23, 2024

Virgin Media - update from Industry Working Group

Three industry bodies – the Association of Consulting Actuaries, the Association of Pension Lawyers and the Society of Pension Professionals – have published an update on the progress of their discussions with the Department for Work and Pensions regarding regulations to mitigate the issues arising from the Virgin Media case.

The statement says that ‘The working group continues to believe that the secretary of state should make regulations that would, subject to appropriate safeguards, enable the validation retrospectively of any amendment that is held to be void solely because either a written actuarial confirmation was not received before the amendment was made, or where such a confirmation cannot now be located.’

The form of any such regulations is still under discussion and the three organisations hope to provide a further update in the New Year.

Read the Virgin Media statement on the ACA website.

TPR: updated dashboard guidance

The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has updated its initial guidance on pensions dashboards to reflect external developments and industry feedback. Rather than using the term ‘member’ to refer to all dashboards users, the guidance now distinguishes between ‘savers’ (meaning users of the dashboards), and ‘members’, meaning those who have been matched by schemes.

There is significant new content for trustees and scheme administrators to be aware of. In particular, the ‘Connecting to pensions dashboards’ section includes additional material on the process for registering schemes with the Money and Pensions Service (registration ensures that only regulated schemes are allowed to connect, to support the required security and performance standards); the technical connection phase and connection to the live environment. The section on ‘Matching people with their pensions’ sets out additional details about ‘find requests’ and preparing data for matching, including relevant data protection requirements; and the ‘Ongoing connection and record-keeping requirements’ section has been expanded. TPR also provides specific commentary throughout the guidance on schemes with multiple sections and members with additional voluntary contribution arrangements.

Read the Pensions dashboards initial guidance. 

TPO: blog post on operating model review and case management initiative

The Pensions Ombudsman has published a blog post reflecting on its Operating Model Review and the changes to its complaints process, including the expedited decision-making process that was introduced in September 2024. TPO’s shorter-form expedited determinations will not generally be published, but TPO has provided a recent example to illustrate the process. It will also publish a periodic summary of the types of cases that are resolved via this process.

Read the blog post from The Pensions Ombudsman.

Read the example of an expedited determination.

Holiday arrangements

This is our final edition of ‘What’s New This Week’ for 2024; our next edition will be published on January 13, 2025. We hope you have a happy and restful break.