UK regulator sets tone for pensions industry for year ahead

Nausicaa Delfas, the chief executive officer of The Pensions Regulator (TPR), said the UK pensions industry can expect 2025 to be a year of “decisive action” from the regulator. 

Last year TPR transformed to a more prudential style of regulator, addressing risks “not just at an individual scheme level, but also those risks which impact the market and wider financial ecosystem”.

This year, Delfas said TPR will be implementing this vision further.

“We will continue to engage with industry in existing and new ways, so that we hear directly what the challenges are and how we, collectively, can overcome them,” she added, stressing that the industry needs to be clear on what the regulator expects.

“Ultimately, we want schemes, advisers and administrators to engage with us early to prevent problems arising later. We are not interested in just putting out fires. We want to stop things catching alight in the first place,” she said.

Delfas warned that if pension schemes ignore this collaboration, the regulator will step in to intervene in the “most appropriate way, using our powers where needed”.

Over the next 12 months, Delfas detailed key milestones the regulator will use to reduce the regulatory burden and raise standards, capitalising on new opportunities. The regulator will also continue to change how it supervises the most significant schemes, starting with master trusts.

TPR also anticipates launching its innovation hub to encourage the industry to support market innovation and facilitate open and transparent conversations on new models and ideas at an early stage.

Other milestones include setting out future approaches to enforcement and tackling serious crimes, embedding value for money, implementing a more strategic approach to raising standards of trusteeship and helping defined benefit schemes consider the full range of alternative models of provision through new guidance.

Delfas said: “2025 will be a year of decisive action from The Pensions Regulator, with genuine and open collaboration and a focus on long-term outcomes for savers over tick-box regulation.”

Read the digital edition of IPE’s latest magazine