Claims management companies (CMCs) are shifting focus away from defined benefit (DB) redress claims in favour of other financial services issues, as compensation estimates for DB redress claims continue to fall, Broadstone has said .

Broadstone’s latest DB redress tracker showed that compensation for a typical pension transfer redress case continued to drop, falling from around -£16,500 at the start of the year and -£26,250 at the end of the second quarter of 2025 to around -£44,000 at the end of September 2025.

Broadstone described this as a “radical decline” in potential DB redress since 2022, when average compensation for the use case was above £150,000.

The consultancy attributed this fall to “strong” equity performance and rising gilt yields through the third quarter of 2025.

Broadstone suggested that the decline in redress has led CMCs to pivot towards other, more profitable, areas within the financial services industry, where instances of ‘secret commission’ have been identified.

In particular, the group warned that CMS are increasingly targeting the mis-selling of defined contribution (DC) pension scheme opt-outs, as well as free-standing additional voluntary contribution (AVC) mis-selling and personal loan or credit card affordability redress.

However, Broadstone senior consultant and actuary, Simon Robinson, clarified that the consultancy is still seeing “many cases” where compensation is due, which he attributed to a variety of factors, including the date of the transfer and the consumer’s age at the time, the sector of the ceding DB scheme and the investment decisions made by the consumer.

Given this, he argued that it is “important” for firms to be able to triage past books of historic transfer business to focus their resources on cases where redress is more likely to be required.

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