Consumers will have various modes of redress available to them if they are not served legally or properly by their scheme provider or the dashboard provider. Our response to the consultation on dashboards highlighted the need for a clear liability model for the whole dashboard system. The objective is to enable users to identify easily where to raise a complaint or a dispute if a dashboard fails to work, or if they fail to receive their pension information. We have asked the Money and Pensions Service, through the industry delivery group, to consider how this might operate and to make recommendations. The Pensions Regulator and the FCA will regulate compliance by pension schemes and the Information Commissioner will have a role in ensuring that the disclosure of pension information takes place in accordance with data protection legislation. Only FCA-approved bodies can provide a qualifying dashboard. Only qualifying dashboards can connect to the infrastructure, and they will fall under the full regulatory regime.
New Section 238G, introduced by Clause 119, ensures that the regulator will be able to monitor and enforce compliance with the new requirements, in keeping with the existing regulatory regime. The FCA also has the power to enforce rules that it will make under this legislation. Part 14 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 allows the FCA to enforce any requirement on authorised persons, including those setting up or operating a personal stakeholder pension.
5.15 pm
Turning now to the need for dashboard providers to act in the best interests of their customers, I agree that the needs of customers must be taken into account, but not through fiduciary duties as proposed in Amendment 68. The FCA has an existing framework to ensure that authorised firms, which will include dashboard providers, take the interests of customers into account. This includes the principle of paying due regard to the interests of customers and treating them fairly. Fiduciary duties arise out of fiduciary relationships
—those of trust and confidence—mainly in relation to prudently taking care of money or other assets for another person. Providers of dashboards will not be in a fiduciary relationship with dashboard users as they are merely an intermediary facilitating access to information about people’s pension savings.