Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of current (a) legal (b) administrative and (c) financial penalties for the provision of poor pension transfer advice.
The Government is committed to working with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the independent financial services regulator, to ensure consumers have access to high quality financial advice. The FCA is responsible for ensuring that the financial advice market works well, competitively and fairly. The Government has established a strong regulatory framework to enable the FCA’s work.
The FCA has considerable power to take action where it sees evidence of poor pension transfer advice. For example, they may impose a financial penalty on firms or individuals, require the firm to pay redress to its customers, place restrictions on the firm’s permissions or prohibit individuals from operating in financial services.