Sarah Smart is leaving the Pensions Regulator. I have recently written about the tremendous impact she has made to Pensions and to many like me.
This is what the Pension Regulator’s press release has to say
| Sarah Smart has decided to step down as Chair of The Pensions Regulator (TPR) in July 2025. |
| Ms Smart has been on the workplace pensions regulator’s Board since 2016, first as Senior Independent Director and latterly as Chair of the Board.
Sarah Smart said:
“Millions of people rely on a workplace pension to support them in later life and I’m so proud of what we have achieved in my time on TPR’s Board over the last nine years.
“The challenge of the last decade was getting people saving, the challenge of the next is to make sure that the system really works for savers.
“To make that a reality TPR is fundamentally changing to become a regulator that doesn’t just protect savers money, but also drives value in the system and supports innovation in the market. Now with the ongoing government pension reforms there is a unique opportunity to make pensions work for everyone.
“During my nine years on TPR’s board a huge amount has changed in the pensions landscape and, recently, also in my personal circumstances. I now feel it is the right time for me to step away from TPR to concentrate on my personal situation. But I know that, with the strong leadership in place at TPR and hardworking and talented colleagues at all levels, we can help make the changes needed to ensure the next generation of savers have opportunity and empowerment in retirement.”
Minister for Pensions, Torsten Bell, said:
“I would like to thank Sarah for her nine years of committed service at The Pensions Regulator. Her public service, at a time of significant change in the pensions landscape has been hugely valued. I wish her all the best for the future.”
Its move towards an outcome-focused regulator (TPR says)
During Ms Smart’s time at TPR the organisation made a number of radical outcome-focused interventions in the market including:
- Massively expanding pension participation – successfully implementing automatic enrolment which means that more than 8 in 10 workers are putting something away for their retirement.
- Made sure that schemes were well run and well governed – brought in an authorisation regime for master trusts – ensuring that the vast majority of savers, some 26 million memberships, are in schemes with the highest governance standards.
- Introduced clearer funding expectations – through the introduction of the DB Funding Code and helped the defined benefit market move towards a more secure funding position.
- Supported new market innovations – overseeing the introduction of superfunds and collective defined-contribution schemes to the market.
- Helped make sure TPR is a risk-based and outcome-focused regulator – expanding TPR’s delivery approach to include systemic risk mitigation and ensured that the pursuit of good saver outcomes became the primary prioritisation tool.
The search for a successor will be led by the Department of Work and Pensions in accordance with the government’s public appointments guidance with an ordered transition over the next six months.
|
Pension Plowman says
I have my own views of the progress of the Pensions Regulator since Sarah took charge and suspect that she is a tad frustrated. I wish her well as she has given much and should give much more.
It is not enough for me to criticise TPR, as my friend Andy Young tells me – I should not criticise TPR but suggest ways it can go forward to fulfill the aim Sarah has had for nearly ten years.
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About henry tapper
Founder of the Pension PlayPen,, partner of Stella, father of Olly . I am the Pension Plowman
“It is not enough for [you, Henry] to criticise TPR, as [your] friend Andy Young tells [you] – [You] should not criticise TPR but suggest ways it can go forward to fulfill the aim Sarah [Smart] has had for nearly ten years …”
“So Andy, did you hear about this one?
Tell me, are you locked in the punch?”
1. TPR should stop protecting the PPF. The PPF is grown up now and quite able of protecting itself.
2. TPR should stop going down the road of the Accounting Standards Board (in the UK) and EIOPA (in the EU, to which TPR still seems to be joined at the hip) in trying to discount everything in sight with “risk-free” rates, with “98-99% certainty” (whatever that means) as TPR old boy, David Fairs, admitted on that Darren & Nico podcast.
3. Now that we’re no longer in the EU, drop that “technical provisions” nonsense and get real with actuaries, auditors and trustees about using a “going concern” basis for budgeting discount rates. Relegating “solvency/matching” valuations to the footnotes, as a contingent liability (or asset) unless (in a minority of cases) the going concern assumption is no longer justified.
And if a DB scheme’s contingent liability disclosure is a 70/80/90% solvency valuation, don’t forget to remind readers of accounts, members of DB schemes, etc. of that PPF safety net.
Will it happen? I very much doubt it. TPR won’t change its spots …
And I’m not sure these were/are Sarah Smart’s aims either.
Each of the changes listed by Byron are needed to try to turn around the economic impact from UK DB pension schemes. They should be supporting the economy rather than dragging it down these last 20 years.
But the most critical of these absolutely is the TPR’s misguided protection of the PPF, which it has executed by strangling our once thriving DB schemes in a Herod like attack to kill off all threats to ensure the growth of its favoured charge, the PPF.
I don’t think you’re right Byron. Sarah Smart is someone who wants better pensions and we have a system that has got better at saving (AE) but worse at (private) pensions. Sarah has been working hard at this for the best part of 10 years and she will leave with 5 stars for effort. She will be disappointed because so much she needed to change hasn’t.
I agree with you Henry.
The problems with TPR arise from and can only be addressed by Parliament. After all TPR was set up specifically to protect the PPF and the pressures on TPR sometimes appear to come from ill informed politicians seeking to apportion blame elsewhere when something goes wrong. Would we have had the BHS scandal without the Pensions Act 2004? Would Liz Truss’ Government have fallen if pension schemes had not been required to think of in terms of gilt based valuations adapted from the Pensions Act 1995?
Sarah to me at great distance appears to have been a breath of fresh air, trying to set an objective oriented direction for the TPR away from the orthodoxies of the “pensions industry” and regulator group think. This may come from her background as I believe her first involvement with pensions was as a member nominated trustee. She appears to have been able to retain the mind set of an outsider looking in, despite all the pressures to be incorporated into the orthodoxies of the advisory and consultancy mindsets of trying to comply with existing structures and guidance.
She will be difficult to replace, but the Government and ultimately Parliament needs to consider what they want to achieve for pension provision and saving, and then put in place structures that provide the best prospect of success. That will require embracing new concepts and ideas and not always considering failures, which there will undoubtedly be. We need a pensions champion not a “regulator”.