Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Flight and Baroness Altmann

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 2nd March 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I will make a few observations about this suite of amendments. It strikes me that the demands to add even more to the current proposal for the dashboard are fraught with danger from the customer perspective. I agree that, from a strategic, overall macro perspective, if one is looking to plan one’s retirement income, it will be most helpful to have as many sources reflected in any dashboard that will contribute to that income. However, the problem we face in getting this dashboard up and running is that there are so many different types of pension and of scheme that we already face a monumental task in just trying to list people’s pensions and make sure that the dashboard reflects all the elements attached to them over the many decades: the different tax regimes they have been under; whether they have a guaranteed annuity or protected tax-free cash; a guaranteed return of some kind; whether benefits have to be taken at specified ages, otherwise certain things are lost; whether there is any extra insurance in there that might be attached to the pension from old-style schemes; protected rights, and so on. And that is just for defined contribution, before we even get on to the defined benefit records.

Equity release has significant dangers for any consumer who is considering it. My worry is that, if consumers look at this information on a dashboard, they will not understand those dangers and will think that the money is available. Recently I have seen very many cases where individuals or their families have taken out an equity release loan for something like 25% of the value of the equity of their home, with an interest rate rolling up at 6% per annum for 20 or 30 years, meaning not only that, if they were to pass away, no value would be left in the home but, more worryingly, if they needed to sell the home and move to a smaller one—if they took out equity release in their 50s or 60s and, in their 80s, needed to downsize for reasons of care or convenience—they would be unable to do so because there would be no equity left for them to use.

Therefore, I caution significantly against trying to go more broadly. I think that we have enough of a challenge in trying to get pensions alone on to a dashboard. I completely agree that it is important to have the state pension on there and, in that regard and in speaking to amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Flight to which I have added my name, we want people to be able to see what their projected state pension will be. However, we will need an electronic system so that people can go online to check their state pension. If Verify is not the gateway to that, we will need to develop an alternative secure gateway. We need to make sure that the dashboard has a standardised protocol and standardised systems so that every pension provider has to use the same IT structure that can then be securely fed to a dashboard.

[Lord Flight]

With the state pension, you already get from social services advice on what your pension will be about a year before you draw it, so it strikes me that the state pension information is just sitting there waiting to be used by the dashboard.

[Baroness Altmann]

I thank my noble friend. Of course, he is absolutely right but the point of the dashboard is that much younger people can plan their future pension income. The current procedure is to encourage people to log on to the state pension checker, where they can verify their future predicted state pension income so that, as they get into their 50s and closer to retirement, they will be able to make more meaningful financial planning. However, as my noble friend Lord Young pointed out, there are significant security concerns with the current gateway system that allows you to find out what your state pension is. Therefore, if we want the state pension to be on the dashboard, we will need a certain level of security.

The aims of the amendments are correct. We want to be able to see the state pension and a comprehensive list of pensions, but I caution against trying to go more broadly. I also caution against commercial dashboards which might use their own IT systems that lock people out of checking their pensions on other providers’ systems and which try to encourage people to merge their pensions. Indeed, we have seen that the systems of some pension providers do not always flag up the guarantees that can be very valuable for individuals. If people are being not advised but merely guided, or if it is merely information and they are not aware of the guarantees, they could lose out and have no comeback.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, the amendments in this group stand in my name and those of my noble friend Lord Flight, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and the noble Lords, Lord McKenzie and Lord Hutton. A number of us have tabled amendments in this group on similar themes. I will leave other noble Lords to talk specifically to their amendments but the main concern that we are trying to address is that there should be proper protection for consumers when using these dashboards. What is proposed in different formats is that the Financial Conduct Authority should oversee any dashboards—particularly the commercial ones—as a regulated activity. We have not seen that specified in the Bill and feel that clear regulatory protection for any consumers using a pensions dashboard needs to be on the face of the Bill.

Obviously there are different ways in which the FCA may impose regulatory protection. However, if this is meant to be an activity that benefits consumers, then, given all the experience that we have had in pensions and the issues that have arisen for consumers from time to time when there is an asymmetry of information and pension providers, and providers of different products are able to take advantage of the fact that consumers are not always totally au fait with the information on their pensions that they are presented with, it is really important, for example, that the FCA makes sure that the information is clear and that there is a recognised standard for a dashboard so that it cannot be misleading for consumers in some way, as might sometimes be the case. Sometimes providers do not intentionally try to mislead consumers but the language that they use every day is natural vernacular for them, although it does not mean a thing to a consumer. A provider might think that they have explained something very clearly for anyone who knows all about pensions but, on reading it, the customer might get totally the wrong idea or not understand what is being presented and perhaps take an incorrect conclusion from it.

Amendment 68 suggests that the provider of a pensions dashboard should have a fiduciary duty to the user of the dashboard. There is merit in our considering that as an extra layer of protection so that, once again, the provider of the dashboard is required to consider what the consumer might understand and need, and the provider therefore has a duty to help them rather than take advantage of them in some way, whether intentionally or not.

I am not sure that I need to take up the time of the Committee any further. That is the thrust of the intent behind these amendments, and I look forward to hearing from other noble Lords on this issue.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, the point that I want to make is that there are four cases where the FCA is the regulator but no reference is made to where the Pensions Regulator will provide the regulatory task. It might be readily understood by the industry why regulation is divided but there is a question mark over whether citizens will automatically know to go to the FCA for certain things and to go to the Pensions Regulator for others. I am sure that there are sound reasons for it but I would be interested to hear the Government’s view on what the regulatory model should be.

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Flight and Baroness Altmann

Monday 21st November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight]

The issue is an administrative one, in that you have people’s pension fund money, and the manager has got into trouble and, let us say, gone into liquidation. What administration would make sure that a new manager takes over and continues to investment-manage those pots of money? There have been suggestions that the Pensions Regulator himself should be empowered, or maybe required, to act as a broker with regard to such arrangements, but that problem has not yet been solved. That, surely, is the practical issue, not people losing money out of their pension pots.

[Baroness Altmann]

The issue that we are dealing with is indeed an administrative issue, but saying members’ pots are protected does not protect members’ pots. In a scheme which has failed and is winding up, and whose administration is in disarray, it will take some time and money to decide and assess how much each member’s pot is actually worth, for example in the cases of a big master trust whose systems fail or of a smaller master trust whose systems simply were never up to scratch. We have 80 or so master trusts out there at the moment and have had no protection regime at all, no capital adequacy rules and no proper assessment of the quality of the trusts. We have so many members’ pension funds growing for them, and there is the possibility that more than one of these schemes will fail and need to wind up. There will be costs associated with assessing what the value of those members’ pots actually is. I do not hear anything at the moment that explains how the costs of administering and sorting out the records of that scheme, so that we know what each member’s pot is worth, are going to be funded. If the Pensions Regulator finds a way to pick up the cost, if NEST has to pick up the cost or if there is some insurance regime for industry-wide assessment of those costs, that is fine, but I just feel that we are assuming that this will be a wind-up of a scheme whose records are fine and it will be shipped off to another scheme, which will want to earn money for those members. That is not the case that is necessarily going to arise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, I believe this clause has aroused most concern in the industry, particularly the insurance industry. A number of organisations, particularly life offices, undertake a range of business activities in addition to simply sponsoring a master trust. The clause suggests that the scheme funder or sponsor must set itself up as a separate legal entity and undertake no other activity beyond sponsoring the master trust. Given that the whole purpose of the Bill is to ensure that funds are available to see through the orderly exit of the scheme’s sponsor, the provisions of Clause 10 as it stands are surely counterintuitive. One wants the sponsor to be as strong financially as possible, but the clause as it stands could well invoke the very thing that the Government are trying to avoid.

More specifically, as the noble Lord has pointed out, the insurance industry typically will have master trusts side by side with group personal pension schemes. As matters now stand, they are regulated by the FCA and PRA, and there would be a considerable duplication of regulation under the arrangements as proposed. I am sure the Government have focused on this, but I certainly feel that Amendments 19 and 20 are appropriate to address the problem that stands.

[Baroness Altmann]

My Lords, I echo the comments made by my noble friend Lord Flight. Why do the draftsmen of the Bill think that having a separate legal entity is definitely a good thing? What are the risks that this approach tries to close down? Perhaps if we could understand those risks better, we might be able to address the issue in a slightly different way. Is the aim somehow to ring-fence the DC covenant of the scheme funder and prevent them from having other financial obligations that might take away from the support for this master trust, or to minimise the burden on checking accounts? Obviously, it is easier to review the accounts of a stand-alone entity than of a much broader group. Hopefully, if we could better understand what the rationale is, it might be possible to address some of the very important concerns that have been expressed by some of our major insurance companies.