This week was jam-packed with big updates from industry and government alike in the pensions sector.

Arguably, the biggest piece of news this week was the announcement of the Mansion House Accord, where seventeen of the largest UK workplace pension providers expressed their intent to invest at least 10 per cent of their defined contribution (DC) default funds in private markets by 2030, with 5 per cent of the total allocated to the UK.

While the Mansion House Accord sounds promising on paper and was welcomed by the industry, the murmurs around potential mandation suggest industry aren't fully convinced on this being optional in he future if the signatories do not meet their commitment.

However, Pensions Minister, Torsten Bell, refused to be drawn into speculation over whether mandation could be considered if the signatories do not meet their commitments.

There was further discussion this week on this topic on mandation at the Work and Pensions Committee (WPC) meeting, where industry experts were asked their thoughts on possible mandation.

However, this was not the only topic of conversation in the meeting as the overarching theme of the session was the upcoming Pensions Schemes Bill, announced as part of the King’s Speech last year, which Bell confirmed earlier this year that he intended to introduce it in parliament before the summer recess.

LCP also joined the conversation around the upcoming Pensions Schemes Bill, suggesting it is set to be ‘crammed to bursting’ with measures but warned that the pensions industry can expect to be “busy in dialogue” with the government on the fine details for years to come.

More broadly, the government hasset out plans to improve Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) fairness and tackle inequality this week, with a consultation covering issues such as the gender pensions gap, forfeiture concerns, and opt-out rates.

Additionally, the pensions dashboards updates continued this week, with the Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) confirming that 16 out of 20 pensions dashboards volunteer participants are still to complete their connection journey.

Earlier this week, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) faced renewed scrutiny over its progress on dashboards from the WPC writing to Bell to highlight several industry concerns and queries.

This included queries around how many providers and schemes have applied to defer connection beyond the October 2026 deadline, over-regulation and private-sector dashboards.

Isio also raised concerns around the scale of the challenge and the level of preparation required ahead of pensions dashboards and encouraged pension trustees to “act now” on their preparations.

In addition to these concerns, the PPI research, sponsored by The Pensions Regulator (TPR), highlighted that impact of a 'fragmented and inconsistent' guidance and advice landscape as this could risk uninformed decisions and poor outcomes for DC savers.

Off the back of this, TPR called for the introduction of a retirement 'sat-nav', which was not the first time this idea has been mentioned, as TPR interim director of policy and public affairs, Patrick Coyne, previously has mentioned this idea several times at conferences, including at our Pensions Age Spring Conference.

The other mention of the retirement sat nav was at the launch of Aviva’s report in collaboration with Age UK this week, which highlighted concerns around retirement adequacy.

In particular, the report indicated a "new and pressing need" for regular financial reviews within retirement and called for the introduction of what it called a "mid-retirement MOT" – offering pensioners guidance and support while in retirement.

Adequacy concerns were also present this week as the industry awaits the second phase of the pension review, although Bell called the suggestion that this issue had been kicked into the long grass "nonsense".

---