LV= said it had called for a pensions passport in its consultation response to replace current “wake up” packs. Managing director, life and pensions, Richard Rowney said: “In order to help people better plan for retirement, we think the passport should set out key facts about their future minimum state pension and private pension and make them aware of the guidance guarantee.” “If this information was provided in a standardised format, we believe that more people would engage with the retirement income market and the planning process. This would help to empower consumers to shop around and prompt them to start thinking about the options available to them, which in turn would result in improved customer outcomes.” Not-for-profit pension provider B&CE also said it had campaigned for an online register of pension assets to be created, with chief executive Patrick Heath-Lay describing its creation a "win-win" for the industry. “In light of the latest pot-follows-member proposals, regarding the creation of a number of federated databases and as well as the recent Budget reforms, this has only strengthened our view," he said. "The time has now come to put the member first and provide them with a one stop shop for their pensions information.” "Pension providers spend millions sending pension statements and trying to find ‘lost and deferred pots’ - it would be far more efficient and effective if this was done centrally, which should include state pension information as well. Rather than having consumers being bombarded with too much information, such a service could bring together all people’s pension information in one place in an informative way."
HMRC Scheme Reconciliation Service
4 August 2014
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) launched the Scheme Reconciliation Service in April 2014 to help pension scheme administrators and trustees reconcile their records for all non- active members against HMRC records in advance of the ending of contracting-out in April 2016. Although it's not compulsory for scheme administrators/trustees to use this service it is their responsibility to make sure records are accurate.
HMRC are now beginning to deal with the queries generated from the records they have already shared with pension schemes.
To allow HMRC to plan future resources scheme administrators interested in using this service should do so as soon as possible.
If your scheme has already registered for the service and received the requested data, HMRC will contact the pension scheme to confirm when this will be worked and the anticipated time it will take to raise any queries.
Please start discussions with your pension scheme administrators now to ensure they take action as detailed above.
More information on scheme reconciliation, how to make a request and the format the data will be provided in can be found here .
Doubts about pension savers making free withdrawals from their retirement funds
5 August 2014
CIPP Policy News Journal
08/04/2015, Page 384 of 521
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