"We are aware of industry concerns that the timings of authorisation are tight but it is important that these new protections for savers are implemented as soon as is practically possible. The timescales of authorisation are established by parliament.
"We have been working with master trusts for two years, including keeping schemes up to date about the process of implementing authorisation and consulting with the industry on the code of practice and supporting guidance.
"To support schemes in their preparations for authorisation we also ran readiness reviews, a voluntary process for schemes to test their applications. We continue to engage with and support schemes. The six month application window opens on October 1."
Adrian Boulding, director of policy at Now: Pensions, said: "We have known that we are bound by the time frames because they are written in legislation and it is a business priority to work within those time frames.
"One of our biggest concerns is whether or not TPR has that resources to deal with the workload. The regulator is likely to receive 30 to 40 applications and a lot of those are going to be around 1,000 pages long, you would hope that they have recruited enough staff to deal with this.
"TPR is publishing its guidelines for authorisation on 1 September and this doesn't give us a lot of time to respond. But the time frames have been set out, so there is no point in grumbling about it now.”
