TPR confirms Now Pensions admin crisis largely over

In April 2016, the pension contributions of almost one in three of the master trust's members – an estimated £18m affecting over 265,000 people – had not been collected, and there were ongoing problems both with the collection of contributions and ensuring the correct amounts were invested for members.

TPR directed the trustee and the trust manager to resolve these issues by serving them with an improvement notice and third-party notice respectively alongside fines for the company.

As a result, Now Pensions has worked closely with employers to collect outstanding contributions. It has moved all of its members onto a purpose-built platform, improved the member data it holds and has rebuilt the data records of more than 350,000 of its members. All of the contributions due to these members have now been collected and invested.

TPR is now satisfied that the trustee and Now Pensions have taken all reasonable steps to comply with the notices. While there are still some cases of outstanding contributions, these largely relate to instances when employers have become insolvent. Now Pensions is working proactively to address these cases and TPR is continuing to monitor the progress being made.

The company is making good any investment losses suffered by members because of its administrative failures, and is now monitoring contributions coming in.

Nicola Parish, TPR's executive director of frontline regulation, said: "When we launched our investigation into NOW, the master trust had significant administration problems in the way it was handling data.

"In particular, its failure to collect contributions was causing problems for employers, and the pension pots of members were not growing as they should have been; this was unacceptable.

"Pension schemes, including master trusts, should be in no doubt that we will act if we become concerned about the way they are being run. We will not accept failings that put members' savings at risk."