U.K. defined contribution plans with £100 ($136) in assets or less will be exempt from paying administration fees, the government said Wednesday.

A consultation into fee cap rules aimed at protecting automatically enrolled plan participants from paying high fees resulted in the government keeping the fee cap at its current level set at 0.75% of assets under management and administration.

The consultation was launched in June. However, due to additional concerns raised by respondents to the consultation around the impact of events such as COVID-19, the government decided not include transaction costs associated with trading within the fee cap as more information on the impact of such cost is needed. Instead, the government chose to introduce a minimum asset level at which DC plans would be exempt from paying administration fees.

“Nobody should be automatically enrolled, only to find their hard-earned pension savings significantly reduced by charges. Therefore, I will be introducing a minimum level initially set at £100 before a flat fee element of a charging structure can be applied to these pots,” Guy Opperman, U.K. minister for pensions and financial inclusion, said in the consultation response published Wednesday. The minimum asset level will be kept under review.

The U.K. government found in a 2020 Pension Charges Survey and consultation evidence that DC plans in the U.K. already pay fees below the flat fee, at around 0.48%. “The charge cap at 0.75% remains the right level and for that reason I will not be making changes at this time,” the minister said.

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