The Pensions Administration Standards Association (PASA) has published new guidance to help trustees, administrators and providers assess how ready they are to deliver guided retirement.

The new Guided Retirement: Operational Readiness Guidance, focuses on the practical steps schemes can take now to prepare for guided retirement.

PASA said the 2029 implementation date gives schemes more time to prepare, but warned significant operational changes may still be required.

The guidance covers possible changes including greater workflow automation, stronger system integration and data flows, clearer accountability across organisations, appropriate controls around automated decisions and communications and support.

It also includes a readiness checklist covering strategy, systems, data, governance, communications, risk and compliance and delivery planning.

PASA DC working group chair, Jess Rigby, commented: “Guided retirement won’t simply be a product design exercise. Whatever the final framework looks like, it will ultimately have to work operationally for administrators and, most importantly, for members.

“That means understanding whether systems can support the journey at scale, whether the right data is available, who is responsible for what, how members will be supported and how retirement income will actually be paid reliably.”

She continued: “We don’t think schemes need to have all the answers today. But there’s a great deal they can sensibly do now to understand their starting point, identify gaps and dependencies and make sure administration is involved early enough in the design process.”

PASA chair, David Fairs, said the additional implementation time for guided retirement is welcome, but should not be a reason to wait, explaining decisions about default pensions and member journeys have consequences for systems, data, people, processes and ultimately the experience members receive.

“There’s an important balance to strike,” he said. “The industry shouldn’t build final solutions before the requirements are sufficiently clear, but neither should it wait to understand its capabilities and the scale of change which may be needed.

"Starting readiness work now will put schemes in a much stronger position as the framework develops.”

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