Four trustees of the Pakistan International Airlines Retirement and Death Benefits Plan have been fined £500 each for failing to get accounts audited on time for two years in a row.
This is the first time that the Pensions Regulator has enforced its fining power under section 10 of the Pensions Act 1995 against a scheme for this type of governance failure.
The requirements were not met by the deadline in 2015 or 2016 and, according to the watchdog, no reasonable excuse was given.
Trustees or pension managers of most schemes are legally required to obtain audited accounts and an auditor’s statement about contributions every year.
The regulator found that the trustees had treated their obligations as a “low priority”, even after the scheme’s actuary highlighted the problem to the regulator in a breach of law report in November 2016.
Executive director of frontline regulation Nicola Parish said: “We will take action if we believe members’ benefits are at risk from failures in a scheme’s governance and administration. Obtaining audited annual scheme accounts is a statutory requirement and a fundamental aspect of good governance.”
She added: “Failure to obtain audited accounts can hinder a scheme’s ability to obtain a valuation and can also be an indication of wider governance failings.”
