MPs foresee pension guidance ‘déjà vu’ after government brushes off new calls for trials of automatic appointment booking

“If we don’t trial any of these things, we will be sat here in a few years’ time with more people having suffered detriment and we will then be scrabbling around for ideas how to do things but won’t have the evidence for them because we didn’t trial them in the first place.”

– Emma Hardy: “I would love the Minister to take away from this the need to push the FCA, to say actually we want you to firm up what exactly are you going to do. When are these trials going to take place and when are you going to have a deadline for designing them? Because it feels like they are offering warm words and not much concrete action.

“I think a firm and clear message from government to regulators to get on with these trials would help get this situation moving more quickly.”

– Stephen Timms: “Government and regulators need to end their indifference on this. We need at least to trial auto enrolment into a service that enables better outcomes for pensions savings. No doubt there will be difficulties but let’s at least try it out.”

– Alan Brown: “When industry and all these bodies are saying there should be a trial of auto appointments, it’s not controversial and it is something the government should actually embrace. It was the Conservative government that set up the Pension Wise system as a complementary service to the pensions freedom legislation, then it surely makes sense that the government want to ensure that as many people as possible do access impartial advice.

“The government’s approach to non-advised savers seems to inhabit a space somewhere between ‘fingers-crossed it will be ok’ and ‘if savers stuff it up it’s their own fault’.”

He said of the Minister’s focus on ‘stronger nudge’, mid-life MOTs and Pensions Dashboard: “These are measures I do support but these aren’t available in the here and now whereas Pension Wise is.”

– Matt Rodda: “First of all we should acknowledge, seven years on from their introduction, whilst increased pension freedoms have brought greater flexibility, they have also resulted in a potential greater degree of risk.

“Most people only make a decision about their pension on this scale once in their lives and it is quite staggering only 14% of people are receiving appropriate advice from the service. Just imagine is that was happening with any other major financial decision that anyone makes. In those cases alarm bells would be ringing in government ministers’ office and across the relevant sector.

“The government is taking rather small steps in the right direction, but need to do so much more on this issue. And I do hope the Minister will elaborate on these points and will reassure us that he is addressing this with the level of energy that is needed.”

– Nigel Mills (summing up): “Even with the ‘stronger nudge’… there will still be hundreds of thousands of people making this life-changing decision without the information they need and without even knowing that they don’t have the information they need. That is not a situation that we want to see and will inevitably lead to some people suffering detriment that they could dodge with a free, relatively quick and completely painless high quality guidance service. A system that we put in place, that we wanted to become the norm, we wanted to see high take-up of and we haven’t got there yet.”