Tisa Exchange has backed Origo’s call for an industry-wide pension transfer service, with the chairman stating that all pension providers should sign up to minimum standards regarding the process of pension asset transfers.
David Dalton-Brown, chairman of Tisa Exchange, stated that all pension providers should sign up to, or be required to sign up to, minimum standards.
“We owe it to consumers to ensure that this functionality is available, and then to reduce the time it takes for these transfers to take place. If the industry does not act, we believe the regulator will do as they threatened to do with investment transfers/re-registrations.”
As high volumes of pension transfers are expected on the back of auto-enrolment, Paul Pettitt, Origo’s managing director, warned that for the Department for Work and Pensions’ ‘pot follows member’ approach to work, trusted and efficient operators are needed to carry out the service over the long term.
Mr Dalton-Brown said that Tex was established in the form of a cross-industry, open standards based transfer club and in April this year it introduced a new member category for pension providers.
“The new Tex service is perfectly suited to the requirements of automatic enrolment and pot follows member, removing the need for direct regulator intervention.
“Pension transfers between members who sign up to the new category will be subject to a maximum of a six business day service level agreement.
“The biggest threat to consumers being able to benefit from such a positive development would be if it were not possible to integrate the existing Origo systems into the Tex service. We look forward to continuing our work with Origo to make this happen.”
