Expats can rest easy with the news that the government is not planning any new QROPS laws until at least 2020.
The logjam of Brexit legislation is clogging Parliament until March 2019, when Britain formally departs the EU.
This is squeezing the time available at Westminster for other legislation – and pensions are one casualty, according to Charlotte Clark, director of private pensions and stewardship at the Department for Work & Pensions.
She was speaking at an industry conference organised by the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, a trade body for companies in the retirement saving sector.
“The chances of a pensions bill before 2020 look very slim,” she said.
Tinkering with the rules
“One of the great advantages of being in government now is that you can’t legislate; in some areas that causes a great problem, in other areas that is a really good advantage.”
QROPS and UK pensions have seen years of tinkering with savings rules.
Offshore, QROPS pensions for expats have seen the introduction of the pension age test and the overseas transfer charge.
In the UK, dropping the lifetime allowance and annual allowance have impacted how much big earners can save into pensions.
Both have been affected by pension freedoms that give retirement savers more options about how to take the cash from their funds.
DB pension consolidation white paper
Clark also revealed that a white paper is on the way to examine how small direct benefit funds can consolidate to save costs and safeguard member’s pensions.
“I actually think that we have time to think through the different consolidation models and the pros and cons of different ways of consolidation, and to understand what would require starting to go down that route, and if is the right route for us,” she said.
“The white paper won’t have an answer to this problem, but it will provide a direction of travel.”
Clark also explained that the government did not view direct benefit workplace pensions as in crisis, but that more could be done to protect the lifetime savings of workers after lessons learned in the recent Tata Steel and British Home Stores pension upsets.
