Bill Galvin, chief executive of the UK's Pensions Regulator, has said he doubts the organisation will be granted powers to merge under-performing or costly defined contribution (DC) schemes with larger funds to achieve better economies of scale.
He said such powers were unlikely to be granted to the watchdog, and that the responsibility for selecting a good occupational pension fund rested with employers. Galvin said: "We propose, and we will be consulting on this later in the year, a code of practice for trust-based schemes that look to provide auto-enrolment".
He said that, as auto-enrolment began in earnest, employers would be responsible for selecting a DC scheme that could offer scale and had sufficient clout with its buying power.
Citing statistics from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, responsible for regulating the country's superannuation funds, Galvin noted that the larger not-for-profit funds in Australia were able not only to outperform the industry average, but offer increased performance with less volatility. He said that an "element of scale" was needed within the pensions system in the UK, echoing similar comments by the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF).
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