Clerical Medical believes that many pension schemes will struggle after April 6th, as newly created roles of scheme administrators become compulsory. They have criticised rival pension providers who will not take on scheme administration duties for trustees. HM Revenue & Customs will automatically assume that the pension schemes' trustees will take on the administration duties, which will involve reporting to the Revenue annual events reports, quarterly tax change reports and registered pension scheme returns.
Each report requires multiple sets of information from individual members and must be filed with the Revenue within specific time limits. Where pension providers also act as pension trustee for schemes, providers are taking responsibility for the duties, and Clerical Medical has offered to act as an authorised practitioner for its trustee clients, completing much of the reporting work on their behalf.
Clerical Medical believes that this is part of the providers' role, and is necessary to 'treat customers fairly'.
Our view
Well done Clerical Medical. 'Treating customers fairly' is a new regulatory standard introduced by the Financial Services Authority and we believe that many providers have left their clients with a huge administration burden that they little understand.
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