On May 10, the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority issued the latest in a series of working papers as part of its Investment Consultants Market Investigation. This latest Working Paper sets out the CMA's findings following its analysis of whether pension schemes that are more engaged with the market receive better outcomes, in terms of price, than pension schemes that are less engaged. It should be read alongside the Issues Statement on the investigation, published in September 2017, as well as the other working papers, published earlier in 2018.
The CMA's emerging findings are that engaged schemes pay significantly less, and disengaged schemes pay significantly more, when schemes transition into fiduciary management with the same provider as they used for investment consultancy services. The CMA believes that this is indicative that the market is not working well for disengaged schemes, or for schemes facing barriers to engagement.
Comments on the Working Paper are invited by May 24, 2018. All working papers will feed into the CMA's provisional decision report, to be published in July 2018.
The Working Paper on Gains from Engagement is available at:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5af4642d40f0b622dd7aa215/working-paper-gains-fromengagement.pdf , the Issues Statement is available at:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/59c376f7ed915d408c10d131/investment-consultancy-marketinvestigation-issues-statement.pdf and the Investigation Webpage and Other Working Papers are available at: https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/investment-consultants-market-investigation.
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