As the country cooked this week, the heat was also turned up on several financial services authorities as they were forced to bare all in their annual reports.
Away from the tortuous metaphors, there were continued aftershocks from April’s at-retirement reforms and the latest debt drama from Greece, all of which will now be pithily round-up.
1. Warts and all regulatory reporting
It is typical, you get no regulatory transparency for ages and then three reports come along at once.
Over the last couple of days, the Financial Conduct Authority, The Pensions Regulator and the Pensions Ombudsman all published their lengthy annual documents.
FTAdviser dutifully sifted through them all these tomes for the choicest bits of information, revealing the spiralling pay for top FCA executives, the gaping hole in their staff pension scheme and the fact that advisers topped the list of those being whistle-blown about.
Away from the FCA, The Pensions Regulator’s report detailed the number of complaints it received quadrupled year-on-year, with 49 new complaints being at stage one of the formal process during 2014 to 2015.
Finally, this morning the Pensions Ombudsman admitted challenges in relation to increasing volumes of work, with more than 1,300 new investigations predicted to be taken on over the coming year, up 42 per cent compared with the 915 five years ago.
“We are finding it hard to keep pace with the demand for our services within existing resourcing levels,” the document read, adding that this would mean it would take longer to deal with cases in the future.
2. Pensions industry still top of the agenda
Nearly three months on from the April at-retirement reforms and the focus on pensions issues remains unrelenting.
On Monday our colleagues at Investment Adviser reported on a dearth of talent to fill the booming number of vacancies in the revitalised pensions market, preventing firms from pressing ahead with new sales strategies.
Meanwhile, CPD content from Aegon’s investment director Nick Dixon was one of the best-read stories on the site, debating pros and cons of the various new retirement options on offer and in the wings.
Of course, this plethora of choice means many have warned of mis-selling and scam potential for the many retirees that will eschew regulated financial advice when making decisions.
According to Jessop Fund Managers managing director David Hughes, the Treasury has been holding private meetings with senior figures in the financial world, as problems over insistent clients and availability of advice have continued to grow.
“From a provider’s point of view we are all really nervous of a future mis-selling scandal. We do not want to go down the non-advised route,” he commented.
3. Greece is the word...
The slow-motion trainwreck story that just keeps on giving, this week saw more brinkmanship from Syriza leader and prime minister Alexis Tsipras, as the country faced the rejection of a third bailout request for €29.1bn (£20.6bn).
This followed the announcement on Monday of capital controls which shut local banks, meaning many ATM machines subsequently ran out of money and some pensioners were unable to collect their payments.
Less of an immediate worry, but nonetheless indicative of the state its finances are currently in, was Moody’s downgrading Greece’s government bond rating from Caa2 to Caa3. However, the usually reactionary markets reacted with something approaching indifference, having apparently already priced in the spectre of a ‘Grexit’.
Nutmeg’s chief investment officer Shaun Port commented: “We believe the backstops put in place in the past three years will limit contagion to European banks should Greece leave the euro. It’s likely the ECB will do whatever it takes to guarantee continued growth.”
4. ...while Aussies struggle with overseas pensions
Meanwhile down under, another slow-burning story continued to have its embers stoked, as the UK’s HM Revenue and Customs told the Australian Treasury that their superannuation funds no longer comply with its rules under the new pension age test needed form them to remain recognised overseas pensions.
A couple of days later only one Australian scheme was left standing on HMRC’s official list of recognised overseas pension schemes. There were 3,811 schemes on the Rops list - 1,653 of them Australian - but this has now been slashed to 663 with just the Local Government Superannuation Scheme remaining.
5. Landmark ruling for friendly fraud
Finally, full details of a case from a couple of months ago made for a popular story on the site, as the High Court ruled against two Financial Ombudsman Service final decisions which upheld fraudulent complaints against Cirencester Friendly Society.
You may remember coverage of the protection policy claimant who was found by the friendly to actually be racing his supercar and smoking cannabis in Crete, rather than suffering from chronic fatigue in North Yorkshire.
The case was hailed as vindication for the society, who fought against ombudsman decisions and payouts for several years, while a lawyer for Cirencester added: “The judgment may see renewed confidence in insurers highlighting that the court is an alternative and appropriate forum to deal with serious fraud allegations.”
peter.walker@ft.com
