Pensions Weekly Update – 25 March 2025

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 published a blog post on connecting to the dashboards ecosystem via a third-party, including dealing with registration codes. Separately, the approved dashboards standards are now available on PDP’s website.
• The draft Pension Fund Clearing Obligation Exemption (Amendment) Regulations 2025 were laid before parliament on 17 March 2025. Once the parliamentary process is complete, the regulations will ensure that certain pension fund derivative contracts will continue to be exempt from the clearing obligation provided for in Article 4 of UK EMIR.
• The European Commission has proposed to adopt an extension of the two 2021 data protection adequacy decisions with the UK for a period of six months. The commission notes that with this extension, the free flow of data between the EU and the UK would be maintained until 27 December 2025. The expectation is that this would provide sufficient time for the UK Data Bill to progress through parliament and become a UK statute. Once that process has concluded, the commission will assess the new legal framework and decide on its adequacy. In the meantime, the existing UK data protection rules continue to apply to data transferred from the EU.
• The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has announced the publication of its three year strategy for 2025-to-2028. The FRC has updated its purpose, which will be “to serve the public interest and support UK economic growth by upholding high standards of corporate governance, corporate reporting, audit and actuarial work”. It says that a key focus will be improving businesses’ access to capital by maintaining a regulatory environment that is underpinned by trust and confidence in audit, corporate reporting and corporate governance, and that these are all critical factors for investors and other stakeholders who rely on them to thrive and grow, such as pension holders, suppliers and employees.
• The chancellor will make her spring statement on 26 March. The House of Commons has published a briefing paper explaining what will happen on the day and summarising the economic position.
• When a company shareholder (including a pension fund that holds shares in a company) wants to access company information, what is it entitled to see? Our publication provides an insight.
• On 19 March, the UK Home Office announced increases to visa and sponsorship fees to take effect from 9 April. There are increases for most fees listed, which will impact almost everyone including skilled worker visa holders, sponsors and those applying for settlement and citizenship. Carine Elliot provides more information in this blog post.
• Don’t forget to register for our employment law update webinar, which is taking place at 12:30 p.m. on 27 March 2025.

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