Speaking at the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association’s (PLSA) annual conference in Liverpool, Jamie Fiveash, chief executive officer of Smart Pension, said the UK investment industry should stop waiting for the government and drive change itself.
He said it was “very difficult” to take politics out of pensions at the moment, adding that the industry is “stuck with short-termism”.
“We’re stuck with changing pension ministers and new ideas. We spend a lot of time lobbying and changing it, and then we don’t actually get it done,” he noted.
In order to fix this, Fiveash said, the industry “needs to get on the front foot more”.
He said: “We are constantly waiting to be done, it’s a shame that we have to be legislated to do the right thing by our customers – whether that’s the Value for Money framework or consumer duty. The industry needs to take more responsibility.”
Fiveash pointed out that overseas, things like pension dashboards were not introduced by the government but by the providers. Similarly, Net Benefit in Australia was brought in by superannuation schemes to focus on performance.
He said: “As an industry, I don’t think the government can afford not to listen to asset owners because it needs asset owners on its side. We should drive the change and we should drive the roadmap. We should work more collaboratively rather than being disparate as we are at times.”
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