PensionsApr 13 2021

How workplace schemes provide opportunities for advisers

  • Describe the FCA's role in workplace pensions
  • Identify the business opportunities for advisers from workplace pensions
  • Describe the TPR's influence over trustees of work-based schemes
  • Describe the FCA's role in workplace pensions
  • Identify the business opportunities for advisers from workplace pensions
  • Describe the TPR's influence over trustees of work-based schemes
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How workplace schemes provide opportunities for advisers
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Auto-enrolment saw over a million new schemes established with over 10m new savers. This growth continues today, albeit at the much slower pace of about 120,000 new schemes each year.

Most of the change being experienced is being driven by new regulation. Some of the more headline-grabbing examples include Independent Governance Committees (IGCs), the Master Trust approval process, value for money assessments, and implementing ESG.

Today’s market

The workplace pension marketplace has two regulators: The Pensions Regulator (TPR) regulates 63 per cent of schemes open to retail business today, while the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) 37 per cent. 

In reality, the regulator and governance styles have little impact on the day-to-day experience of consumers and so these schemes can be compared in most aspects on equal terms.

The workplace pension market has changed significantly in the last few years. TPR's master trust approval process resulted in over half closing. In addition, providers that did not exist before auto-enrolment now have significantly more workplace pension assets under management than some very established providers.

To help advisers, Defaqto currently reports on 59 workplace pension schemes from 31 different providers. These are all retail schemes open to new business and not tied to an industry or employer type.

TPR publish a list of 38 approved master trusts; however, nine of these are not open to new business or are tied to an employer type and so do not appear on the Defaqto database. 

Considering the pressure the FCA is under regarding pension scams, we do wonder why they do not follow TPR's approach and publish a consumer-friendly list of regulated schemes. If the lists from TPR and FCA were combined that would be even more useful.

There are four types of workplace pension governance and the following chart illustrates how they are used across today’s market:

Source: Defaqto

 

Opportunities for advisers

There are four headline ways that financial advisers can get involved in the ever-expanding workplace advice market:

New businesses Every UK business with an employee must have an auto-enrolment compliant pension scheme from day one of operation. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures indicate that there were 118,000 new businesses with employees started in 2019 and we know that every one of them required a pension scheme. This means there is a sizeable new business market constantly available

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