Government papers: Pension Charges Survey 2016: Charges in defined contribution pension schemes

Millions of savers are benefiting from low-cost workplace pensions, according to a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) survey into pension charges.

In March 2014, DWP announced a number of measures to improve the value for money of defined contribution workplace schemes, including a charge cap of 0.75% on default arrangements.

These are the second set of survey results since the charge cap was introduced. They provide comparable data covering the period after the introduction of the charge cap.

Key findings:

• Around 98% of members of qualifying contract-based schemes and 99% of members of qualifying trust-based schemes paid a maximum of 0.75%.
• Among qualifying scheme members, the members of the smallest schemes, which previously charged higher than the cap, benefitted the most.
• Non-qualifying schemes, whose charges are not subject to the cap and were already typically higher than 0.75%, had not generally brought down their charges in response.
• There was virtually no improvement in providers' abilities to report on transaction costs.