The Clock Is Ticking for Pension Trustees – And This Is Not an Action That You Can Delegate

By Claire Dimmock on Posted in UK Pensions
Close up of an alarm clock with an approaching deadline.

HMRC’s annual deadline of 31 January for many things tax-related has been a useful reminder that registered pension schemes are required to move over from HMRC’s Pension Schemes Online platform to HMRC’s new Managing Pension Schemes (MPS) service. HMRC refers to this process as migration.

Some Background

HMRC launched the MPS service in 2018. HMRC newsletters since then have made clear that all registered pension schemes would be required to migrate onto the MPS service in due course. Some pension schemes have still not migrated over. For the most part, this has been because there has been no urgency, and no immediate need to migrate. If a scheme did not have an event report to submit, it seemed reasonable to query the need to deal with migration when there are so many other pressing issues for pension trustees to be tackling.

However, given that those schemes that remain on the old Pension Schemes Online platform will eventually be de-registered, and potentially suffer a consequent 55% tax charge, it is not a matter of if a scheme migrates, but when.  And it can take some time to carry out the migration process. If you have not already done so, now would be the time to get started, if only so that you have some idea of the scale of what is required and can plan accordingly.

For some schemes, the migration process is proving a challenge. If you are thinking that your scheme administrators will be dealing with this on your behalf, please think again. Only those persons registered as the “Scheme Administrator” (SA) on HMRC’s Pension Schemes Online platform can initiate the migration process. The SA for these purposes is not your third-party administrator, which HMRC calls a “scheme practitioner”. The SA is usually one or more of the pension scheme trustees.

Are You Ready to Migrate?

There are three key steps that you will need to take (with several sub-steps) to migrate onto the MPS service. Hopefully this blog will prove helpful but if you find that you end up going down a different route to the steps set out here, that might be ok too! The steps below should at least give you an overview of what is required.

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The First Own Risk Assessment – Don’t Be Under Pressure

By Matthew Giles and Kate Bailey on Posted in UK Pensions
Retro-Manometer

If the pressure is rising on your general code compliance programme, now is the time to take stock.

Many occupational pension schemes are required to complete their first Own Risk Assessment (ORA) by 31 March 2026 or 5 April 2026. If your scheme’s ORA is due in Spring 2026, is your progress going according to plan?

The ORA is an assessment of how well the scheme’s Effective System of Governance (ESOG) is working and the way potential risks are managed. The ESOG needs to be complete for the ORA to be fully carried out. Our recently issued factsheet contains helpful suggestions on how the first ORA could be approached.

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The UK Pension Schemes Bill 2025 – All the Fun of the Fair

By Claire Dimmock on Posted in UK Pensions
Ferris wheel

Who doesn’t love a good fairground ride? The Pension Schemes Bill certainly caters for every taste. It covers a wide variety of provisions, from thrill-seeking measures intended to capitalise on the vast amount that is saved in UK pension funds, through to measures likely to appeal to a more sedate nature, such as amendments to legislation that doesn’t quite work in the current economic and political climate.

In a September 2024 report by the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI), the PPI estimated that the assets of the UK pension sector ‘towards the end of 2023’ were valued at just under £3 trillion, with defined benefit (DB) representing 55% and defined contribution (DC) having topped £1 trillion towards the end of 2023. It is worth noting that of that £3 trillion, workplace pensions account for over £2 trillion in assets. It is no small wonder then that this has been the focus of the chancellor’s pensions reform.

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Time for Some Spring Cleaning? Ombudsman’s Determination Shows Need to Press on With GMP Equalisation

By Claire Dimmock on Posted in UK Pensions
Bucket with cleaning products

With the Pension Schemes Bill on its way in “late Spring”, now might be a good time for trustees to take stock of their trustee agendas and to brush off some items that may have been left to gather dust. A recent Pensions Ombudsman determination serves as a useful reminder that, for most schemes, GMP equalisation is not yet done and dusted.  

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Countdown To The First Own Risk Assessment

By Kate Bailey on Posted in UK Pensions
Current image: RISK on keyboard

It is just over a year since The Pensions Regulator’s (TPR) general code of practice came into force. In the last year, our clients have made good progress towards compliance, with trustees working with internal teams and external advisers to review and update their practices and procedures, and to ensure that these are documented, leading to strengthened governance frameworks.

Many schemes have a year-end date of 31 March or 5 April, meaning that trustees of these schemes now have 12 months until the date on which the first Own Risk Assessment (ORA) must be carried out in spring 2026.

As a reminder, an ORA must be carried out if a scheme has more than 100 members. It is an assessment of how well a scheme’s Effective System of Governance (ESOG) is working and the way that potential risks are managed. The ORA must be documented. In our latest video, commemorating the first birthday of the general code coming into force, my colleague Matthew Giles suggests that trustees should count backwards from the date of their first ORA, to ensure that compliance plans are on track. Trustees should rework their timetable if there have been any changes of circumstances since it was first formulated.

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Waffles, Passports and Trustee Directors – Part Two

By Claire Dimmock on Posted in UK Pensions
Belgian waffles with fruit

Part one of this blog covered the new requirement for company directors (including trustee directors) and persons with significant control to verify their identity with Companies House. They will be able to do this voluntarily from 25 March 2025 (the week during which national cocktail-making day, national cleaning week and international waffle day will be celebrated in the US). This requirement is part of measures introduced under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA). But are these measures proportionate? Surely there can’t be that many companies in England and Wales registered for fraudulent purposes?

In 2023, the BBC reported that between June and September of that year alone, over 80 companies had been set up using the residential addresses of unsuspecting people living in the same street in Essex. Experts speculated that these companies had been registered in order to launder money or to take out bank loans before closing down the companies and disappearing.

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Waffles, Passports and Trustee Directors – Part One

By Claire Dimmock on Posted in UK Pensions
Belgian waffles with fruit

What will you be doing during the third week of March? According to a US website, there will be various celebrations underway. Perhaps you will be making the most of national cocktail-making day, or maybe national cleaning week will grab your attention.  (Although, on a personal note, I am happy to say that it is not national cleaning week in the UK.) While reading through the possible celebrations (and the list is endless), international waffle day rather caught my eye.

If you are a director of a corporate trustee, however, you might be creating, or logging into, your GOV.UK One Login account. *From 25 March, a Companies House timeline indicates that directors of UK registered companies should be able to undertake voluntary verification of their identity. This will become a mandatory requirement during the autumn of 2025. Directors of existing companies, including directors of corporate trustees, will be required to undergo this new identity checking measure as part of their company’s annual confirmation statement. You can find out the date by which your company must submit its annual confirmation statement by heading to the Companies House website and searching against your company’s name.

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SECURE Act 2.0 Mandatory Automatic Enrollment Requirements for New Retirement Plans Guidance Released

By Squire Patton Boggs on Posted in Tax, US retirement plans

One of the hallmarks of the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (SECURE Act 2.0) legislation was to increase participation in retirement plans. On January 10, 2025, the Treasury Department and the IRS came one step closer when they announced the issuance of proposed regulations requiring automatic enrollment for new Code Section 401(k) and 403(b) retirement plans (Proposed Regulations). As background, the SECURE Act 2.0 added Code Section 414A, which provides that a retirement plan will not be qualified unless it satisfies certain automatic enrollment requirements under Code Section 414(w). These requirements:

  • Require automatic enrollment of employees with elective deferral contributions of at least 3% and no more than 10% in the first year of participation (with 1% increases between 10-15%)
  • Permit participants to withdraw their automatic elective deferrals within 90 days of their first elective deferral contributions being made
  • If no investment election is made, permit the automatic elective deferrals to be invested in qualified default investment alternatives (QDIAs)

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The Department of Labor (DOL) Adopts Self-Correction for Common Retirement Plan Fiduciary Breaches

By Stacey Grundman on Posted in Tax, US, US retirement plans

For the first time since the DOL adopted its Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program (VFC Program) in 2002, retirement plan sponsors will be able to utilize self–correction as an efficient means to correct their most frequent compliance failures – late transmittals of participant retirement plan contributions and retirement plan loan repayments.  

The DOL finalized an update to its VFC Program adding the Self-Correction Component (SCC) for these fiduciary failures and, additionally, finalized an amendment to an existing prohibited transaction exemption (PTE) that provides excise tax relief for transactions that have been self-corrected. 

The SCC feature and excise tax relief become effective on March 17, 2025. 

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