Mansion House speech outlines financial services sector reforms

Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, gave her second Mansion House speech on July 15, 2025. Although the speech could be judged disappointing in that there was no news about the second phase of the Government’s pensions review, a swathe of measures dubbed the “Leeds Reforms” on “cutting red tape” in financial services were announced.

For pensions the main highlights are in the financial advice space, as outlined below:

Targeted support: a policy paper from HM Treasury sets out the proposed changes implementing targeted support, along with draft regulations to be made later this year. These will introduce a new regulated regime where authorised firms will be able to: 

• Suggest alternative contribution rates rather than just indicating someone is under saving for retirement.
• Help people navigate retirement options by suggesting a course of action “for example, a specific drawdown product”.
• Encourage savers away from cash savings accounts, to be less risk averse and take up investment in stocks and shares.
• Offer a range of services “including robo-advice”. 

Changes to Financial Conduct Authority guidance: 

• The FCA’s advice rules and guidance are to be simplified, creating a clearer distinction between basic and more holistic advice. The aim is to give firms confidence that they can provide simple, focused advice to customers with straightforward needs at a lower cost.
• Improve the FCA’s existing guidelines on the advice guidance boundary, thus helping firms better understand the opportunities in providing consumers with support that does not constitute investment advice.

Other changes

• GDPR restrictions are to be amended to allow more marketing to auto-enrolled members.
• Banks will be permitted to alert customers to specific investment opportunities in moving money from cash accounts to stock and shares investments. 
• The current risk warnings on investment products is to be reviewed, to enable people to accurately judge investment risk. 

Comment

The UK Government's vision for freeing up investment advisers to encourage individuals to save more and prepare for retirement is welcome. Many of the UK’s older workforce do not have a full understanding of what they need to be saving to maintain a reasonable standard of living. 

Financial education for all does need urgent attention and these initiatives should help. However, timing is critical: can saver awareness be raised before pension dashboards are made available so that individuals are ready to make educated choices when they see their aggregate saving pots?