Following this morning’s news that Guy Opperman MP has resigned as Pensions Minister – you can find the details of this in our earlier report – Kate Smith, Head of Pensions at Aegon, comments:
“The Pensions Minister’s resignation leaves pensions in turmoil.
“He was personally leading a number of initiatives to improve pensions engagement including the pension dashboard and the pension engagement season. We had been expecting the government response to the DWP pension dashboard consultation with final regulations any day and everything hangs off this, including the timetable for schemes to connect to dashboards. Every day delayed puts the smooth implementation of the dashboard in jeopardy.
“Initiatives to improve member engagement with their pensions were gathering momentum. These need to continue at pace to help improve understanding of pensions.
“Crucially, the Minister’s resignation could also impact the next steps for auto-enrolment, including lowering the minimum age from 22 to 18 and basing minimum contributions from the first pound, as well as finding solutions for the self-employed. Only this week, the Pensions Minister recommitted to implementing these in the mid-2020s, and suggested increasing the minimum contributions from 8% to 12% over time. All of this could now be in jeopardy.”
