‘Strategically significant’ pension funds to come under TPR’s spotlight

TPR’s chief executive officer Nausicaa Delfas set out the regulator’s priorities for 2025 in a blog post, published today, and appealed for “ideas and solutions” from the pensions industry.

Delfas said the regulator was willing to wield its powers and intervene in the market. Recent evidence shows it has already begun to do this.

The regulator last year announced a shift to “a more prudential style of regulation”, Delfas noted, setting its scope on risks that affect schemes at an individual level but also those that could impact the market and broader financial ecosystem.

The CEO pledged to engage with industry and courted “ideas and suggestions”, adding that “we also don’t want there to be any surprises”.

Over the next 12 months, Delfas said, the regulator will provide more detail on the need for better data, as well as how to raise standards and lower regulatory burdens related to how the industry shares information with TPR.

TPR will also change how it supervises “the most strategically significant schemes - starting with master trusts”, and launch an innovation hub.

“We are not interested in just putting out fires. We want to stop things catching alight in the first place.”

Nausicaa Delfas, TPR

It also plans to set out a new approach to enforcing and tackling serious crimes, maintain its work on protecting savers from climate-related risks, and “help defined benefit schemes consider the full range of alternative models of provision through new guidance”, Delfas wrote.

“Ultimately, we want schemes, advisers and administrators to engage with us early to prevent problems arising later,” she wrote. “We are not interested in just putting out fires. We want to stop things catching alight in the first place.

“But if people ignore this offer of collaboration, don’t be surprised if we step in and intervene in the most appropriate way, using our powers where needed.”