Pensions Bulletin 2025/20

Pensions Regulator launches its innovation service 

The Pensions Regulator has announced the launch of its pensions innovation support service which aims to reduce unnecessary regulatory barriers to pensions innovation by enabling early transparent discussions with pensions innovators. 

Previously flagged as an “innovation hub” at the Pensions Age Spring Conference (see Pensions Bulletin 2025/17), it has now become clear that this service will offer:

• Discussion sessions: allowing innovators to discuss the early stages of developing a new pensions idea or solution with one of the Regulator’s experts, so that they can understand any concerns that the Regulator may have and regulatory issues that may need to be faced. A form to request a discussion session is provided.
• Collaborative events: allowing pension innovators to make connections across the industry, as the Regulator says that its research shows that pension innovators have key challenges that are shared across industry which can be tackled collaboratively. Two events are available – on 4 June 2025 (in person and fully subscribed) and 24 September 2025 (being held online).

Other aspects of the service comprise the following:

• Thought leadership: the Regulator says that user testing found that blogs, reports and information on good practice in pensions innovation were popular as they explain the Regulator’s stance on areas such as targeted pensions support and guided retirement. There appear to be no further details on this yet.
• Cross-government working: to avoid duplication, the Regulator and the FCA will work closely together to give pensions innovators access to the FCA’s own innovation test service. This seems to be no more than providing a link to the FCA’s existing innovation hub.
• Support for emerging models: the Regulator says that it will streamline the process for supporting emerging models. There appear to be no further details on this yet.

The Regulator will focus efforts on two areas of innovation in particular: administration and member experience, particularly in the decumulation phase; and investment and new scheme models such as superfunds, master trusts, CDC and other new consolidation models.

Pensions Regulator says that DC savers need more help in their retirement choices 

The Pensions Regulator has publicised the need, through a report published by the Pensions Policy Institute, for DC savers to be given more help and guidance to ensure they make appropriate retirement choices. 

The PPI report explores how DC savers access and use their pension savings, and whether the products and support structures currently available meet the diverse needs of savers. Key insights include: 

• Saver support in decumulation is lagging – unlike accumulation, where defaults have enabled passive saving, most schemes offer no structured retirement income options, leaving members to make complex decisions alone or transfer out of the scheme. 
• Two “informal defaults” have emerged – full cash withdrawals and passive continuation in accumulation strategies are two patterns that have emerged in the retirement income market, both of which may be misaligned with long-term retirement needs. 
• Advice and guidance gaps persist – many savers, especially those with smaller pots, make decisions without support. Regulatory uncertainty limits how much help providers feel able to give. 
• Data remains fragmented – most information is collected at the pot level, with limited visibility across multiple schemes, making it difficult to assess outcomes or design better support mechanisms. 
• There is momentum, but more coordination is needed – recent and ongoing policy developments and innovation offer potential, but without alignment across the market, many savers may continue to fall through the cracks. 

The Regulator points to the Guided Retirement duty, expected to feature in the Pension Schemes Bill (see Pensions Bulletin 2024/27), saying in effect that the Regulator’s innovation service (see the article immediately above), is a potential means by which proposed products and services supporting this duty can be road tested. The Regulator also calls for a ‘sat-nav’ for retirement “which simplifies options and empowers savers to make informed choices”. However, it is not particularly clear what is meant by this analogy. 

Completing its press release, the Regulator says the following: 

• It wants greater transparency over post-retirement investment strategies and for DC schemes to make better and more systematic use of the data they have to better understand their savers' characteristics and circumstances. 
• It will continue to support further pension scheme consolidation, particularly in the master trust sector, as this could reduce charges, improve scheme governance and services and offer opportunities to improve investment approaches, including consideration of a wider variety of post-retirement options such as in productive assets. 
• It will continue to work closely with the DWP and the FCA to put in place the right frameworks to encourage innovation in savers' interests and ensure pension savers across contract-based and trust-based schemes are appropriately supported to navigate complex retirement choices. This includes working with the FCA on its review of the boundary between advice and guidance and targeted support (see Pensions Bulletin 2024/49) as well as the DWP's proposals for a Guided Retirement duty. 

Pensions dashboard reports on progress

The Pensions Dashboard Programme has published its latest progress update report which comes a month after the first pension provider successfully completed connection to the dashboard ecosystem (see Pensions Bulletin 2025/16).

Perhaps the most significant part of the May 2025 update report is the explanation of the PDP’s ongoing work to prepare and guide industry through their connection journeys to the ecosystem. On this, the PDP has been working closely with around 20 connection providers, four of which have completed their connection journey. The other 16 are expected to complete in the summer (with five of these currently in the final stages of integration testing).

Once each connection provider has completed their connection journey they are then able to add schemes and pension providers for which they are responsible. This does mean that scheme / provider connection can be delayed beyond the dates set out in DWP guidance. However, both the Pensions Regulator and the FCA have been clear that there will be no regulatory intervention for pension providers and schemes who are unable to meet their ‘connect by’ dates in guidance solely due to their dependence on an industry participant who has yet to connect.

The report also:

• Confirms that the PDP standards for pension providers and schemes have now been approved for Northern Ireland (and so approved for use across the whole UK).
• Provides an update on how the public sector pensions dashboard, to be provided by MaPS under its MoneyHelper brand, is progressing, including plans for consumer testing, in two phases, later this year.
• Contains information on how the PDP has been engaging with potential private sector pensions dashboard providers. However, there is no news on when such dashboards will be able to follow on from the MoneyHelper pensions dashboard.

There are also updates from the Pensions dashboards advisory group, the DWP, the Pensions Regulator and the FCA.

Separately, the pensions dashboards advisory group has posted its thoughts across similar topics and the PDP has published supplementary guidance to its signed off reporting standards.