Retirement market and the advice gap
Lee Clarke, insurance regulation partner at PwC, said: "The retirement market is a key focus of this years FCA Business Plan with the announcement of a review on Retirement Outcomes during the next year. In addition to preparing the framework for the secondary annuities market to go live in April 2017, the FCA will also consult on proposals to impose a cap on early exit charges for pensions as previously announced.
"The insurance industry will continue to look for further guidance from the FCA around steps companies can take to make financial advice more accessible to more customers.
"As the industry gets to grips with a large amount of change and disruption, insurers are keen to continue to enhance their relationships with their customers – any clarity from the regulator to help narrow the advice gap and to enable robust automated models delivering good consumer outcomes to be developed with more confidence would be welcome."
Independent Governance Committees
Lee Clarke, insurance regulation partner at PwC, said: "Equally important will be a review of the effectiveness of Independent Governance Committees (ICGs). Given they have had time to demonstrate their effectiveness, the FCA will be considering the impact they have had, and firms would be well advised to review the contribution and pro-activity of their workplace pension IGC's in advance of the 2016/17 review."
Data
Craig Skinner, director at PwC, commented: “The FCA's continued and increasing focus on data shows that data - and analytics - continues to be seen as both a risk and an opportunity. The chance to vastly improve customer experience provided by data and analytics is an opportunity for the industry to regain customer trust and build truly differentiating products.”
“However, the breakneck speed at which technology and cyber threats are developing means that insurance firms - with the wealth of data they possess - must quickly understand the potential pitfalls their legacy data and systems could face.”
“As the insurance and investment management industries continue to focus on big data and digital automation, organisations must prioritise controls and protection over their data management and processing."
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