• Following our thematic review of pension switching advice, we have published a pension switching advice suitability assessment template to help firms.
• Firms may wish to use it when carrying out their own compliance checking to help ensure that any advice on past or future sales is suitable.
• The template may help to compliment firms' existing compliance checking process, but should not replace them – it should only form a part of an overall compliance checking process Guidance on using the template has also been published
• We will use this template in the follow-up assessment we will undertake in Q3 this year.
• If we identify failings at that stage, firms may be subject to regulatory action including, where appropriate, referral for further investigation with a view to possible enforcement action

Background

On 5 December 2008, we published the findings of our thematic review of the quality of pension switching advice.
We found mixed standards of advice - some firms were giving consistently suitable advice; however, we are concerned that some had given unsuitable advice in a significant proportion of cases. 

Get more information at quality of advice on pension switching.

As a result of the findings, we are taking action to mitigate the risks of unsuitable advice on past and future sales, and will be carrying out further assessments in 2009.   

Regional roadshows
To help firms, we are running a series of regional roadshows between February and April. The roadshows are by invitation only and we have allocated all of the places already. We have invited only those firms which do high levels of business. If you have not been invited it will be because you firm does not fit the necessary criteria (Please note, firms based in Scotland will receive their invitations in March). 

Assessing suitability
To help all firms that provide pension switching advice we have published a pension switching advice suitability assessment template. Firms may wish to use it when carrying out their own compliance checking to help ensure that any advice on past or future sales is suitable. This is for firms to use locally and if you want to use it we therefore suggest you save it before filling it in. Guidance on using the template has also been published. We have sent an email to all firms giving pension switching advice giving a link to the relevant material.

For more information about the template and how to use it go to
Pension switching template

Further Information

Follow-up assessment