This week brought a range of updates from various areas of the UK pension system, featuring announcements from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), The Pensions Regulator (TPR), and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Yesterday (22 May), the FCA launched a consultation seeking industry views on proposals to enhance the methods regulated firms use to report customer complaints to the regulator.

In terms of other efforts from regulators to reduce “unnecessary” regulatory burden, TPR officially launched its innovation support service aimed at enabling early, transparent discussions with pensions innovators.

Both of these policy updates support the UK government’s growth agenda, which seems to be gathering even more attention ahead of the upcoming Pension Schemes Bill.

However, in a speech this week TPR chief executive, Nausicaa Delfas, emphasised the scale of the challenge facing the pensions industry, calling for industry collaboration to tackle the UK’s “unfinished” pension system ahead of the delivery of the legislative reforms in the bill.

In particular, the New Capital Consensus (NCC) raised concerns around the government's push for mandation of pension fund investment, an issue widely debated last week, particularly for larger schemes, indicating that the UK economy cannot afford for DB capital to be locked into “regulatory” straitjackets.

NCC founding director, Ashok Gupta, argued that the pension system's structure must be “urgently revisited” and the Pension Schemes Bill should be used to unlock growth through smarter consolidation instead.

The DWP was also busy this week with an update on Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) State Pension underpayments, which identified 12,379 underpayments between 8 January 2024, and 31 March 2025, totalling around £104m in arrears.

Additional research from the DWP revealed that most employers have either not changed or have not thought about changing their pension provider, while alternative research showed that savers transferring between DB to DC pension plans voiced a lack of satisfaction.

Surplus and funding levels were another key topic of discussion this week, with DWP research suggesting that DB pension scheme funding levels have hit a record high, with three in four DB schemes now in surplus.

LCP partner, Luke Hothersall, suggested that improved funding levels offer "huge" opportunities for investment, particularly given the surplus proposals recently announced by the government.

However, over a third of DB schemes admitted they were unsure how to use surplus amid these increased funding levels.

The confusion for savers didn’t end here, as Hargreaves Lansdown's research showed that 21 per cent of people have lost track of a pension.

Despite this confusion among most of the population, research from Barnett Waddingham suggested that ethnic minority individuals are expected to fare better in retirement than the UK average and showed “significantly” higher engagement with pension investment decisions.

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