Pension Wise, Tpas and Mas to be combined into single organisation.
The government has revised its plans to overhaul its consumer guidance bodies and will now create a single organisation offering guidance on pensions, debt and other issues.
Replacing Pension Wise, The Pension Advisory Service (Tpas) and the Money Advice Service (Mas), the merger will offer a single channel for financial guidance.
Previous plans had envisaged the creation of two separate bodies, focused on pensions and money advice, respectively, but these have now been abandoned.
“It is best having everything in one. People are hitting retirement with debt problems and [other issues], so being able to talk to one team of people seems to make far more sense than [going] to Pension Wise about DC benefits, Tpas about DB benefits and MAS about debt problems,” said David Brooks, technical director at Broadstone.
Plans for a pensions, money and debt guidance overhaul were first revealed in ex-chancellor George Osborne’s budget in March, after a Treasury-commissioned independent review of Mas deemed it to be no longer “fit for purpose”.
Prior to the announcement, Mas and Pension Wise, the latter having been introduced alongside pension freedoms, came under fire on numerous occasions.
Unveiled in 2010, Mas received criticism for a slew of issues, including former chief executive Tom Hobman’s £350,000 annual salary as well as its failure to provide adequate information on the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) when it first came into force in 2012.
Similarly, Pension Wise has been criticised as being under-used since first coming onto the scene in 2015.
While pension services were focused on the over-50s in the past, Broadstone’s Mr Brooks believes members of the public should be able to receive guidance “at any age”.
“If a young person wanted to talk about auto-enrolment or transferring benefits to and from a pension provider, I don’t see why they should have to wait until they’re 50 to talk to this body.
“It seems pretty arbitrary really, so I think it should be for anyone at any time who wants to talk to someone who is independent.”
Tpas also embraces a broader approach; chief executive Michelle Cracknell said: “Thinking about pension benefits usually coincides with life events such as retirement, divorce and death. It is therefore imperative that everyone can access support and help at these times.”
kuba.shandbaptiste@ft.com
