Margaret Snowdon
Pension scamming is a curse as it affects people’s retirement income and reduces confidence in pension saving.
Over the past 25 years, Margaret Snowdon has been a voice of reason, highlighting the impact of this curse, making decision makers aware of its impact and recommending ways to practitioners, legislators and regulators , on how we can drive scammers away.
I will be speaking with Margaret on Tuesday about this and I want to make a general invitation to readers of this blog , so that no-one feels excluded from this session for reasons that they aren’t part of the Pension PlayPen Committee or aren’t prepared to pay to attend the session. I urge you to join our community or to pay occasional fees, but on this occasion, you can attend for fere, using the link below. Cut and paste the link into your calendar so that you can join the meeting on Tuesday March 26, 2024 10:30 am
Why this is so important
We know that scamming is linked to frustration among consumers
Early pension liberation scams preyed on frustrations people had they could not liberate their pension before they reached age 50 (now 55).
More recent pension scams prey upon frustration about growth in pensions and prey on people’s need for bigger pots.
Specific scams , such as the BSPS pension scandal , resulted from a perception that pensions were trapped in the hands of employers and trustees with whom members had lost trust. Frustration was made worse when steelworkers were told not to transfer.
We now have, as a result of attempts to frustrate scammers , a huge number of frustrated savers who want to combine pots but are finding it hard to do so. A recent FOI by the Sun Newspaper revealed that 16,500 transfer requests last year had been flagged as inappropriate. But the reasons for this flagging were frequently unclear, even to the Money and Pension Service who provided guidance to those wanting to combine pensions.
At our meeting, we will not just be discussing scams, but the likelihood that frustration could lead to disenchantment with the pension system (the most fertile breeding ground for scams of the future).
Margaret is not one to mince her words. She advised the DWP (as did many others) against the current regulations, suggesting that “white” or “clean” lists of pension schemes approved to combine pensions should be created to minimise the throwing of flags.
The DWP have made it clear that it does not see the current system as working but it is taking it a long time to take action. We are expecting a consultation on changes to the current legislation this spring but this may well drift. Even if the consultation is expedited, we are unlikely to see any action in 2024 (and so from this Government).
What can be done to make matters better , not just to stop scamming , but to deny scammers the conditions that allow them to prosper?
Find out with Margaret and me , on Tuesday next week at the Pension PlayPen coffee morning.
