The Government is to create a small pensions pot consolidator as part of its Pension Schemes Bill.

As you may know, I am a staunch believer that there should be some form of regulation introduced in respect of SSAS – my preference would be for all SSASs to require a professional trustee to ensure that the governance, understanding and administration of each SSAS is undertaken correctly ensuring legal compliance and offering the best platform for savers to succeed in their financial goals. 

SIPP and SSAS provider InvestAcc said revenues increased 16.3% to £10.5m in the six months to the end of December 2024, up from £9m in the same period in 2023.

Total advised customers for investment and SIPP platform AJ Bell rose 7% year-on-year to 177,000 in the first quarter.

Defined benefit pension value has fallen to its lowest rate since the XPS Group’s Transfer Watch was established in 2018.

The Pensions Regulator (TPR) said it expects DB schemes to switch their focus to ‘endgame planning’ from deficit recovery.

In late December, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer tasked 10 regulators with removing ‘barriers to growth’ in order to attach the jump leads to the UK economy. On 16 January, the FCA wrote a letter to the Government to outline their plans to support the growth agenda.

As Nikhil Rathi is reappointed as CEO of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for another five years, the FCA has set out its strategic direction for 2025/26, with important implications for financial advisers.

HMRC’s January pension schemes newsletter announced changes to tax codes for pensions, and a few headlines followed proclaiming HMRC had finally fixed the over-taxation issue. It would be fantastic if that was the case, but despite nearly 10 years of getting it wrong, the problem isn’t resolved yet.

The dark reality of pension scams is that we don’t really know how common they are. Fraud is a crime which tends to have low reporting events and with pension scams, it’s no different. The emotional toll can be as large as the financial, with some people being too embarrassed to report that they have been the victim of a scam.

The lifetime allowance may have been consigned to the annals of history but the various forms of protection are still relevant in the new world, especially when it comes to the amount of pension commencement lump sum (PCLS) that can be taken.