Industry views of The Pensions Regulator have improved in a number of areas, particularly in the regulation of defined benefit (DB) funding, its latest ‘perceptions tracker’ research results show.
Click here to view the Perceptions Tracker on the Pensions Regulator website.
The main purpose of the annual perceptions survey is to provide the regulator with an understanding of how effectively it is perceived to be fulfilling its statutory objectives by external audiences and pension professionals, and how useful they find the services and information it provides.
The regulator’s interim chief executive Stephen Soper said:
“I am pleased with these results, particularly the positive response to our website. We will continue to develop and refine our regulatory approach, to ensure we are equipped to tackle the challenges we face - regulating defined benefit and defined contribution (DC) schemes, fighting pension liberation fraud and working with employers and their business advisers for automatic enrolment. The confidence and support of the industry is essential for us to achieve our goals, and we will need to work hard to build upon this year’s positive findings.”
The survey is conducted among in-house and external trustees, pension managers, administrators, employers, lawyers, actuaries, and independent financial advisers (IFAs).
Some of the key findings this year include:
- Respondents who consider the regulator’s performance to be ‘very good’ or ‘good’ remained broadly unchanged at 66% (compared with 64% in 2012).
- 30% of those who consider the regulator’s performance to be ‘very good’ say this has improved in the past year.
- There are significant improvements in perceptions of the regulator’s effectiveness at ‘strengthening the funding of DB schemes’, up from 65% to 75%, and ‘reducing the risks of claims to the Pension Protection Fund’, up from 55% to 68%.
- This year, the survey also included perceptions of the regulator’s ability to protect members of DC schemes (75% said ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ effective), and maximising employer compliance with their automatic enrolment duties (66% said ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ effective).
- 97% of respondents view the regulator’s website as ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ useful. 94% rate the Trustee toolkit in the same way.
- The regulator continued to meet the 70% average agreement with the ‘PACTT Better Regulation’ Principles, specifically: to be proportionate, accountable, consistent, transparent and targeted.
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