Pensions: what's new this week - May 28, 2024

Pensions Ombudsman: Planned changes to operating practices

The Pensions Ombudsman has published a blog post announcing planned changes to its practices, aimed at reducing both waiting times and its backlog of cases. It has identified three priority areas for change:

• tightening the conditions for complaints to be investigated under the early resolution process;

• increasing the use of short-form decisions and determinations; and

• considering whether some categories of complaint should be dealt with by other organisations and whether a de minimis threshold should be applied in some circumstances.

Read the blog post.

TPR announces data quality regulatory initiative

The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has issued a reminder to schemes of the importance of good data quality in complying with their obligations in key areas such as pensions dashboards and value for money.

TPR intends to engage with ‘hundreds of schemes’, asking them to explain how they are measuring and improving their data, with a particular focus on forthcoming deadlines to connect to the pensions dashboards ecosystem.

Read the press release.