A discussion between parliament’s General Commission and Patrick Coyne of TPR and Charlotte Clark
This session gets a lot of interest from Government , perhaps because both regulators are within Government and neither have a commercial interest in the Pension Schemes Bill. You can listen to their session between 9.55 and 10.25 on this link
The Pensions Minister kicked off meaningful questions by asking what TPR and FCA reckoned their part in the implementation of the Pension Schemes Bill.
It seemed obvious enough in the case of Charlotte Clark who has been responsible for much of the work on the widening of investments into private markets. The Pensions Regulator’s responsibility has, of late , been peripheral since the workplace master trusts have been focussing on accumulation and do not pay pensions, this of course will change and the Pension Regulators will have an important part not just in implementing change but in regulating through the Value for Money system which will become a means to ensure that value gets through to the consumer.
The FCA have been doing good work on establishing the guidance/advisory boundary and in targeted support are taking the provision of help to consumers back in the hand of providers. Governing this new approach is going to be important , especially in a world of defaults where questions will be about “what’s happening” rather than “what should I do”.
Listening to Charlotte Clark in this environment , you can see why Government has such confidence in her as a bridge between FCA and TPR, she has a DWP background and was key to the implementation of auto-enrolment a few years ago.
Patrick Coyne has been a communication officer and is good as sounding a safe pair of hands. He has released a Linked In post on TPR’s role.
The trouble with this nice piece of writing is that it is too vague to answer Torsten Ball’s question. Right now, the role of the Pension Regulator depends on the introduction not just of the Pension Schemes Act but on the secondary legislation that will enable VFM, CDC, Superfunds and default decumulation funds to become reality according to the “Roadmap”.
It is a little tough on Patrick to criticise him but we really needed in this session someone who could do more than reel off platitudes, perhaps a pension specialist as we have had in David Fairs and others.
This session was perhaps a test of Regulators by the Government Committee and perhaps most of all by a Pensions Minister who later in the day expressed his dissatisfaction for the criticism that his Bill had received. I suspect that the Government’s regulators are going to need to be a little more committed than they were in front of the Committee.
The Back of witnesses’ heads (Patrick) was all we got to see of witnesses in the morning (things cheered up in the afternoon!).
