The Pensions Advisory Service has been selected to provide the non face-to-face channel of the guidance guarantee, the chief executive of Tpas confirmed at an eValue event this morning (1 October).
Michelle Cracknell said the Treasury will set up a face-to-face channel, but that it had not yet decided who will offer this element of the service. Tpas will be delivering the non face-to-face element of the guidance guarantee, which it hopes will include alongside telephone-based provision a ‘web chat’ service.
Advisers had bemoaned the fact that ‘free’ face-to-face guidance - which some say will compete with full advice - was set to be delivered by bodies such as Tpas and the Money Advice Service which they in part fund through industry levies.
A number of advisers separately told FTAdviser that they would back a voucher system to allow individuals to get free advice from a regulated adviser.
HM Treasury is still consulting on who will deliver the face-to-face element of guidance, while Tpas will be delivering the non face-to-face element of the guidance guarantee.
Ms Cracknell said: “It will be branded with a name so the people that operate the service for them will be working with the name that the Treasury decide for the service.
“At the moment they have got a very significant team including people from digital, various secondaries and around the government.”
Ms Cracknell added: “We already run web chat, telephony and a face-to-face service, and we hope to replicate that in the new world. We are pushing quite hard that as well as telephony there will be web chat because it is quite popular with customers.”
Ms Cracknell added that for the non face-to-face element, which Tpas has been tasked with, the organisation is already running pilot schemes.
She said: “We are doing pilots with a number of providers - we are on our second provider pilot and we have got three schemes signed up as doing pilots.
The first pilot scheme is with Legal and General.
Update 6 October 2014: This article was changed from that originally published to correct an inference that Tpas had been rejected to provide face-to-face services. Ms Cracknell has since confirmed to FTAdviser that Tpas had never bid to provide in-person services.
