It agreed more needs to be done to increase the take-up of free and impartial guidance, despite having removed an amendment from the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill in January that would have auto-enrolled people into guidance when they accessed their retirement funds.
“This removal was necessary as the amendment [demanding] default guidance for those who have decided to access their tax free cash needs a re-think,” Goodland said.
“If a person has already made a decision then any guidance at that point is too late,” she said.
The DWP said it planned to investigate “innovative ways” to boost take-up. This includes Pension Wise, where the government is considering further enhancements to the platform in the coming year.
Tom Selby, senior analyst at AJ Bell, said: “By engaging with providers to test innovative ways to boost take-up – including potentially automatic guidance – we can ensure engagement and understanding of retirement saving is improved without creating unnecessary unintended consequences.
“This testing should cover a range of different nudges at different points in the retirement savings journey,” he said.
John Stirling says:
So, these criminals who are hard selling investments which don’t exist will be put off by making it mildly illegal to contact people in the first place will they? I rather doubt it.
I know proportionality is a tricky thing to deliver, but somehow the FCA just has to have a division which is linked with the National Crime Agency, and then take this stuff seriously at source, rock up without notice, with guns, in a very scary way. That might put off some of the more ‘sales led’ white collar crime, and will reduce the incidence because at least they can intervene before too much damage is done. Currently Justice grinds too damn slowly, and these scammers ignore the ‘polite notice’ that the FCA sends suggesting they may be acting outwith authorisation. Treating criminals in the same way you treat authorised entities is not a winning strategy.
If they are not authorised they are criminals – therefore can be treated without the niceties which are appropriate for dealing with legitimate businesses.
Take a leaf out of the playbook used by the Customs and Excise enforcement arm of HMRC, or better still the anti-terror bits of the Metropolitan Police.