Pensions Weekly Update – 14 January 2025

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Here is our weekly summary of key legal and regulatory developments relevant to occupational pension schemes that you might have missed, with links for further information.

The Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) has issued a blog post commenting on the updated draft reporting standards for pension schemes and providers and confirming the two-phased reporting approach that will be adopted. The reporting standards set out the requirements for generating and recording operational information and reporting it to the Money and Pensions Service. The PDP does not expect to make significant changes to the draft reporting standards before seeking formal approval from the secretary of state for work and pensions.
The government has published the outcome of its call for evidence on the exemption that pension funds currently have from the obligation to clear certain derivative contracts at a central counterparty. The government has decided that the exemption should be maintained for the long term and will take forward secondary legislation to prevent the exemption from expiring on 18 June 2025 (as currently scheduled) and to remove any further time limit on the exemption. The policy will be kept under review.
The Government Actuary’s Department (GAD) has published research and analysis on healthy life expectancy (HLE). While cohort life expectancy represents the number of years that an individual is expected to live, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) describes HLE as an estimate of lifetime spent in “very good” or “good” health, based on how individuals perceive their general health. The research found that data by local area shows that the majority of areas had lower HLE at birth in the 2021-2023 period compared to the 2017-2019 (pre-COVID) period. For males in England, at-birth HLE for the period 2021-2023 is estimated to be 61.5 years and for females it is estimated to be 61.9 years.
Our Labour & Employment Team set out their summary of the key legislative developments anticipated to come into force during 2025.

If you would like specific advice on any of these issues or anything else, please contact a member of our Pensions team.