David Brooks, Technical Director at independent consultancy Broadstone, following today’s announcement from Guy Opperman that he will no longer be continuing as Pensions Minister.
He said: “Looking back over the pensions career of Guy Opperman will mostly be a frustrating experience. His tenure was compromised by Parliamentary time being hoovered up by Brexit and Covid related issues.
“A case in point is the Pensions Act 2021 which began life as Pensions Bill 2019. While it eventually progressed covering primarily Pensions Dashboards, CDC and the new funding and notifiable events regime for DB schemes – the latter two are still not in force, the pensions dashboard activation is at least 3 years away and CDC is slowly but surely coming to fruition for one scheme.
“Guy had some big issues to get moving to change the UK pensions landscape and his frustration came out towards the end with the glacial progress of a leviathan like industry. ESG, ongoing digitisation and rise in professionalisation will be some of the big ticket items for his successor to take forward.”