ARTICLE
16 January 2025

Pensions: What's New This Week - January 13, 2025

AO
A&O Shearman

Contributor

A&O Shearman was formed in 2024 via the merger of two historic firms, Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling. With nearly 4,000 lawyers globally, we are equally fluent in English law, U.S. law and the laws of the world’s most dynamic markets. This combination creates a new kind of law firm, one built to achieve unparalleled outcomes for our clients on their most complex, multijurisdictional matters – everywhere in the world. A firm that advises at the forefront of the forces changing the current of global business and that is unrivalled in its global strength. Our clients benefit from the collective experience of teams who work with many of the world’s most influential companies and institutions, and have a history of precedent-setting innovations. Together our lawyers advise more than a third of NYSE-listed businesses, a fifth of the NASDAQ and a notable proportion of the London Stock Exchange, the Euronext, Euronext Paris and the Tokyo and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges.
The Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) has published a blog post about its updated draft reporting standards for pension providers and schemes.
United States Employment and HR

Welcome to your weekly update from the A&OShearman pensions team, covering all the latest legal and regulatory developments in the world of workplace pensions.

PDP blog post on updated reporting standard

The Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) has published a blog post about its updated draft reporting standards for pension providers and schemes. These standards set out the requirements for generating and recording operational information and reporting it to the Money and Pensions Service; the latest version includes a changelog detailing updates as well as corrections that will be made in the next version. The PDP expects to publish the final standards in the first quarter of 2025.

Read the blog post on the PDP's updated reporting standards.

Looking ahead in 2025

As a reminder, the biggest development on the legislative horizon for UK pensions in 2025 will be the Pension Schemes Bill. There is no definitive list of issues that will be covered in the Bill, but it is expected to address at least the following areas (as per the King's Speech in July 2024):

  • Framework legislation for DB superfunds.
  • A standardised value for money framework for trust-based DC schemes (consistent with the framework of metrics and standards that will apply to contract-based schemes).
  • Measures for the consolidation of small, deferred DC pension pots.
  • A duty for trustees of occupational pension schemes to offer guided retirement products to members.
  • Provisions ensuring that the Pensions Ombudsman is a 'competent court' (relevant to enforcing determinations in relation to the recovery of overpayments).

More recently the government has indicated that it may also include measures:

  • To accelerate the consolidation of UK schemes, including requirements for master trusts and group personal pension schemes used for auto-enrolment to operate at a minimum size and to restrict the number of default arrangements offered. It also proposes to introduce override provisions to enable contract-based arrangements to make transfers without consent to either trust- or contract-based arrangements.
  • To legislate for the consolidation of assets in the Local Government Pension Scheme, including minimum standards and strengthened governance requirements.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.

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