Pensions Regulator outlines its 2025 priorities in a blog

On February 17, 2025, the Regulator outlined its approach to regulation for 2025 in a blog. This builds on the strategy set out in a November 2024 press release, which confirmed a shift to a "more prudential style of regulation".

The Regulator intends to engage with those running pension schemes, in addition to the wider pensions industry, to identify schemes’ challenges, and to establish how the Regulator can offer support. The plan is to head off problems before they arise.

The Regulator’s initiatives outlined in the recent blog include:

• Supporting schemes to raise data standards, capitalise on new opportunities, and reducing the data-sharing regulatory burden.
• Developing supervision in respect of the "most strategically significant schemes, starting with master trusts". It intends to "anticipate and mitigate future risks to savers, enhance outcomes and foster innovation".
• Clarifying its future approach to enforcement and tackling serious crimes.
• Maintaining value for money at the heart of its work and progressing the joint value for money framework with the Financial Conduct Authority, which last year consulted on rules and guidance for DC schemes. This aims to ensure schemes embed value and "ultimately allow savers to choose the right scheme for them".
• Assisting DB schemes to consider the full range of consolidation alternative models available to them by releasing new guidance. The blog notes that the pensions environment is evolving "towards one of fewer, larger schemes".

Each segment will have tiers of engagement based on the specific risks they present to market and saver outcomes.

The biggest master trusts will have a dedicated team of experts at the Regulator assigned to them, which should “ensure the right questions are asked at the right time to identify risks and challenges and support effective decision-making”.