Chancellor plays down pension mis-selling fears

From 6 April defined contribution scheme members aged 55 or over will be able to withdraw their entire pension pot as cash, although withdrawals will be taxed as income.

The Treasury has also published a consultation on creating a secondary annuity market from April 2016. Labour leader Ed Miliband responded by warning of “rip-off merchants” awaiting pensioners.

Addressing the Treasury select committee this yesterday, Osborne insisted the systems created by the Government to support the reforms, as well as oversight from the FCA, will be sufficient to protect savers.

He said: “People can now book their appointments for having that [guidance] conversation about what they want to do with their pension and they can start to book telephone session which will be available from tomorrow.

“The consumer protection is there. The guidance is there. And if people want to they can go and get regulated advice as well.

“We have a good package to make sure that people can get what they need.”

Unfortunately we at TLW do not share the Chancellor’s confidence that there is sufficient regulation in place to protect people from pension scams. It is our view that new regulations is required to protect people from pension scams, the number of which is only likely to increase once April’s reforms come into play.

We have seen people lose pension savings, which they took their whole working lives to build, to scams, most notably Arc, Capita Oak and Westminster pension scams. These schemes netted around £20m for the crooks that ran them with the victims previous pension companies offering little or no protection for them.

If you are concerned that you have been the victim of pension mis-selling then we maybe able to help.