Employers must get to grips with the huge volume of regulatory guidance that has been published on pension schemes in the last couple of years, according to Sarah Swift, pensions partner at law firm, Eversheds, during an interview with Clare Bettelley, associate editor at Employee Benefits.
She said the task is the most pressing pensions challenge currently facing employers.
Regulatory guidance, she said, ranged from the Department for Work and Pensions’ Guidance for offering a default option for defined contribution automatic enrolment pensions schemes, published in May 2011, to the Law Commission’s review of investment intermediaries’ fudiciary duties.
She added: “There’s a huge wealth of guidance all aimed at what should be a good default pension fund that produces the best outcome for members, and it’s really [about] how employers get to grips with all of that guidance to do what’s required.
“How do they deal with the increased governance bar, because it’s definitely getting raised?”
Swift was one of a panel at Employee Benefits’ roundtable discussion, The future of default funds, which was held in December 2013 and sponsored by the Defined Contribution Investment Forum.
The roundtable debated a range of default fund issues in the context of pensions auto-enrolment, from the extent to which default funds are fit for purpose to how employers can communicate their default fund options to employees.
Read the digital edition of The future of default funds.