Pensions Weekly Update

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Here is our weekly summary of key legal and regulatory developments relevant to occupational pension schemes that you might have missed, with links for further information.

Pensions dashboards continue to feature in the news with the names of several potential operators of qualifying dashboards services emerging. These “commercial” dashboards (regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) will operate in addition to the dashboard that will be provided by the Money and Pensions Service. Separately, the Pensions Administration Standards Association (PASA) has issued an update on its practical dashboards guides. PASA aims to publish a toolkit to support administrators and trustees on their duties in relation to additional voluntary contributions very soon. In the meantime, we have published a short dashboards guide, highlighting areas not to be overlooked in dashboards connection plans. Our resource hub contains a lot of useful information, including links to external resources. And did you see our dashboards LinkedIn post which highlights some key messages?
The government has published its Sustainability Disclosure Requirements: Implementation Update 2024. This includes a handy timeline at the end of the document. The government says that it will consult on a UK green taxonomy (broadly, a common framework that assists with assessing and comparing whether an investment is environmentally sustainable) during 2024 and that it will consult in the second quarter of 2024 on the introduction of requirements for the UK’s largest companies to disclose their climate change transition plans, if they have them. The update notes that the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) anti-greenwashing rules will come into effect on 31 May 2024 and its greenwashing guidance is expected in summer 2024. The update also notes that the government plans on making UK sustainability reporting standards available in the first quarter of 2025 and that the FCA will also consult on reporting disclosure requirements for UK listed companies during that period. The government will decide in the second quarter of 2025 on the extent to which sustainability reporting disclosure requirements will apply to companies not falling within the FCA’s remit.
The Pensions Regulator (TPR) issued its annual update on the DC trust-based pensions landscape in the UK, reporting on scheme membership and assets in 2023. Of particular note is the continued concentration of smaller DC arrangements and the continued growth of master trusts, which account for 84% of DC scheme memberships.
In our latest Pensions Life Hack, Partner Victoria Jeacock looks at risk transfer alternatives for defined benefit pension schemes, where there are insufficient assets to buy-in or buyout pensions liabilities in full.
Next week, look out for the next in our series of general code of practice blog posts on the subject of adopting a proportionate approach to compliance. We will consider what a proportionate approach looks like for schemes in an “end game” scenario. Here are the first and second blog posts in our series, in case you missed them.