A new Retirement Quality Mark to ensure products operate in the customers’ best interests is set to be launched later this year.

The initiative has garnered widespread support, according to the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA), which is behind it.

The board of the Pension Quality Mark, which is owned by the PLSA, proposed the idea back in November. A consultation was carried out and it won backing from respondents.
The PQM Board said the new mark could make a real difference by:
• providing strong governance to in-retirement products so they operate in the customers’ best interests not just at the point of sale, but on an on-going basis
• ensuring there are high quality, clear and actionable member alerts
• ensuring that default investment options are well governed and appropriately designed
• providing value for money to savers.

Joanne Segars, PQM executive director and chief executive of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, said savers and those guiding them need help to understand “what good looks like in this new breed of retirement income products”.

Savers have had a “significant amount of uncertainty and worry about retirement income decisions” since the reforms, she said.

She said: “They need reassurance that high quality governance will focus on value-for-money, there is an appropriate default investment strategy in place, and that savers will receive high quality communications throughout their retirement.

“We believe that developing a set of clear and recognisable quality standards for retirement income solutions that people can trust will help product providers to develop the type of products savers need and help savers to make sense of the new choices they face.”

For savers, there was agreement that a quality mark would signal products that had met an independent quality standard in relation to governance and communications.

Some 85% of consumers thought it was important for a good retirement product to be independently accredited by a third party.

Adrian Boulding, chair of the Pension Quality Mark Board, said:
“We will continue to refine the standards and develop the infrastructure to support the RQM, and expect to launch the new mark later this year. In the interim, we will carry out further discussions with pension schemes and providers interested in becoming RQM award holders, as well as the wider stakeholder community.”