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Welcome to your weekly update from the A&O Shearman Pensions team, covering all the latest legal and regulatory developments in the world of workplace pensions.
FRC to provide actuarial guidance for Virgin Media confirmations
The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has announced that it will develop guidance to support scheme actuaries in providing confirmations to remedy historic scheme amendments following the Virgin Media decision (which found that certain amendments made by schemes that were contracted-out on a section 9(2B) basis between 1997 and 2016 are void unless a necessary actuarial confirmation was provided). Draft provisions of the Pension Schemes Bill allow schemes affected by that decision to remedy void alterations if an actuary confirms that it is reasonable to conclude that the alteration would not have prevented the scheme from continuing to satisfy the statutory standard.
The FRC guidance will be released when the legislation comes into force (the Bill is expected to receive Royal Assent at the start of 2026, with the Virgin Media-related provisions coming into force two months later).
Dashboards: Low volume testing has begun
The Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) has published a blog post announcing that the MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard is entering its next phase of testing, starting with a low volume of individuals using real pensions data. This follows on from a recent blog post discussing the success of earlier internal and industry expert testing. This phase will assess whether users can understand the pensions dashboard service and navigate through the complete journey independently, and how well they understand the information returned.
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