Pensions Weekly Update – 8 October 2025 | Publications | Insights & Events

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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.

There is growing pressure on the government to amend legislation to provide increases on Pension Protection Fund (PPF) and Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS) compensation relating to service before 1997. Unite the union has joined the call for the government to take urgent action. We mentioned in a previous newsletter that the pensions minister has confirmed that this issue is being “considered in the round because of the wider public finance implications”.
The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has announced that it will develop technical guidance to support scheme actuaries in confirming that historic pension scheme amendments met the necessary standards. The guidance should be available when legislation in the Pension Schemes Bill comes into force (prompted by Virgin Media v NTL Pension Trustees). The FRC will work closely with industry professionals, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, and the Association of Consulting Actuaries.
The Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) has issued an update on progress with user testing the MoneyHelper Dashboard. Testing by industry experts is now complete; the next phase of testing will include up to 300 non-pensions specialist employees recruited from pension providers and schemes connected to the ecosystem. This phase will last for a few months and will assess whether users understand the dashboard service, as well as whether they can complete the journey independently, including on mobile and desktop devices. Once low volume testing concludes, volumes will increase to thousands of users – the scope and timing of this high volume testing will be informed by the findings of the low volume phase.
Pensions UK has published technical guidance to support users of its vote reporting template. The template allows asset owners to collect voting information from their investment managers in a standardised format to understand and engage with how their stewardship strategy is being implemented.
If your scheme’s first Own Risk Assessment (ORA) is due in Spring 2026, our ORA factsheet offers some practical tips for getting started.
Our Pensions team was delighted to win the “Law Firm of the Year” award at the 2025 LAPF Investments Awards last week. The awards celebrate outstanding achievement in the Local Government Pension Scheme.