£400m now thought to be £20,000m – big numbers
Following yesterday’s blog moaning at the Pensions Regulator for not getting its act together and publish a register of scheme URLs I have been informed of regulations changes that have the potential to make this happen.
DWP’s climate governance regulations which, subject to parliamentary approval, will come into force in October have put TPR in a position to be able to publish central repositories of a number of scheme disclosures.
Regulation 3 of the draft Occupational Pension Schemes (Climate Change Governance and Reporting) (Miscellaneous Provisions and Amendments) Regulations 2021 amends the Register of Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes Regulations 2005 so that TPR must require, via scheme return notices, that trustees provide the website address where their most recent TCFD report has been published as well as the website address of their published Statement of Investment Principles, Implementation Statement and excerpts of the Chair’s Statement. Trustees will be under a duty to provide this information in their scheme return to TPR.
As part of their Climate Strategy, TPR have already committed to publish on their website an index of the web addresses of schemes’ SIPs and will be able to replicate this for TCFD reports also.
This compares with the aforementioned TPR’s statement on launching a register of the 1200 DC schemes facing consolidation…
The only trustee details we publish are those of the ITs on our register of trustees that we appoint to schemes in certain circumstances – it’s not available on line but a copy can be requested (About the trustee register | The Pensions Regulator). We don’t currently hold website details, though we are hoping to start collecting the urls for the VFM, charges and investment information that trustees are (or will shortly be) required to publish on line, via the annual scheme return. We have not yet taken a decision on whether we will publish that information
The URLs for TCFD and SIP statements is the URL for value assessments and most pressingly for consumers, a searchable address to find people who can trace lost pensions.
So let’s hope that the tPR will join hands and adopt a single approach to all occupational schemes that allows us to research companies and create a new more dynamic approach to finding out who’s looking after our money.
If they feel constrained , pass the information to the DWP who seem more confident in listing and sharing websites already in the public domain.
If big Government wants us to move faster , we can do, but we need its help too!
