UK. Andy Bell: Common sense failure risks good work on pension transfers
By Andy Bell
In December last year I wrote in Money Marketing that new regulations designed to protect savers from pension scams would only work properly if common sense was applied by schemes administering transfers.
Sadly, in certain parts of the industry, it appears ‘common sense’ is an alien concept, and it looks increasingly likely the rules will need to be revisited to ensure legitimate transfers aren’t slowed to a crawl or blocked altogether.
Pension transfer scams
As a reminder, this saga started with the industry and Government recognising that even where there was a good chance a transfer was a scam, and trustees and providers cautioned against the risks, some people would always go ahead and transfer anyway.
That’s because they had a statutory right to transfer if they wanted to. And the provider or trustee couldn’t stop them from taking that action.
New transfer regulations introduced last November, however, give pension scheme trustees and providers the power to pause the transfer by raising an ‘amber’ flag where they have serious concerns that it could be a scam and send the member to get guidance from MoneyHelper.
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