Now Pensions and its trustee company have been fined £50,000 each for failing to correctly report historic communication failures to the Pensions Regulator. The master trust has since addressed its processes around reporting.

TPR published a regulatory intervention report about the defined contribution trust with 2m members on Friday. It said historic failures at Now, which led to more than 80,000 statutory communications not being sent, were not reported as significant events to TPR.

Gaucho Rasmussen, executive director of regulatory compliance at TPR, said Now has since satisfied TPR that it has made changes to its processes around reporting.

“The master trust authorisation regime created a safer, more robust and sustainable market for the millions who save into these schemes. And, as this case proves, when things go wrong, we will take tough action to protect savers,” he said.

A spokesperson for Now said: “NPL and NPTL have today confirmed action by The Pensions Regulator resulting from the way in which historic statutory communication failures relating to now:pensions were reported to TPR between 2020 and 2022. NPL and NPTL took appropriate steps to correct these matters for affected members when we identified them. We have also enhanced the Scheme’s reporting processes and TPR has confirmed they are satisfied with the enhancements we have made.”

Under the significant event regime, Now and its trustee were required to report any failure of systems or processes used in running the master trust which had a significant adverse effect on service delivery “as soon as reasonably practicable”, with TPR saying that this should generally happen within one working day. The multi-employer trust and its trustees reported two of the same communication failures as breaches of law but did not do so ‘as soon as reasonably practicable’, TPR said.

The undelivered communications were meant to inform both existing and potential members of their rights under auto-enrolment legislation. TPR said the people suffered non-financial “and, in some cases, financial detriment by being denied the opportunity to make choices over their auto-enrolment options”. 

TPR previously fined Now Pensions £70,000. In October 2017, the Pensions Regulator issued the trustees of Now Pensions with a £50,000 fine, followed by an improvement and a third-party notice a month later, for failing to monitor employer contributions. In February 2018, the regulator added a £20,000 penalty. TPR had been in contact with Now since mid-2014 because of employer and member complaints. 

   

 

Now was then put up for sale and in February 2019, Cardano agreed to buy the troubled master trust, before itself being acquired by Marsh McLennan’s Mercer in 2024.  

In March this year, TPR announced plans to review the amount of capital reserving master trusts must hold, as part of the government’s deregulation drive. Just a month earlier, it had published a new regulatory approach to master trusts, putting them into one of four supervision buckets – monoline, commercial, non-commercial/CDC, and single/connected employers – with different tiers of engagement based on the risks they present to market and saver outcomes. 
 
Master trusts handle 28m memberships and £166bn in assets, representing about 81% of DC assets.