Why the Mansion House Accord Smells Like Pension Mis-Selling on a Massive Scale
Imagine if a regulated financial adviser recommended a client invest billions into high-risk, opaque assets—without a clear evidence base, performance history, or full disclosure of costs. They’d be hauled before the regulator. But when the government does it, it’s labelled a “growth strategy.”
That’s exactly what’s happening under the so-called Mansion House Accord, a pledge by 17 of the UK’s largest workplace pension providers to pour up to £50 billion of DC pension savings into private markets, including a mandated minimum of 5% into UK assets by 2030.
The Treasury claims this policy will “unlock higher net returns” and “deliver better outcomes” for savers. But where’s the evidence?
📉 A Policy Based on Optimism, Not Proof
Unlike financial advisers, the government isn’t required to abide by FCA rules on suitability or evidence-based advice. Yet it is steering policy in a direction that exposes millions of pension savers to untested assumptions.
There is:
- No peer-reviewed research showing better long-term, risk-adjusted returns from UK private markets in DC pensions.
- No full disclosure of fees, which are often far higher in private equity and infrastructure investments.
- No clarity on liquidity, or how scheme members will access their funds in retirement.
- No published modelling comparing traditional passive fund strategies versus this new allocation mandate.
If this were done by a private adviser, it would likely be called mis-selling. But when the government does it? It’s policy.
🎭 Dressed-Up Deregulation
This is not about savers—it’s about shifting the burden of national economic growth onto the backs of ordinary workers, without their informed consent. Ministers are using pensions as a fiscal lever, bypassing the safeguards designed to protect individual retirement security.
Behind the scenes, this is being driven by industry lobbyists, City interests, and political pressure to create investable deal flow for private markets—regardless of whether those deals serve pension members’ best interests.
⚖️ Double Standards
- A regulated adviser would be prohibited from advising a policy without showing due diligence, suitability, and clear risk disclosures.
- Yet the government is engaging in a massive policy experiment, gambling with trillions in workplace pensions, with no requirement for individual consent or personalised advice.
- Worse still, it undermines trust in the entire pensions framework, setting a precedent where government whims outweigh fiduciary duty.
🗣️ Where Is the Member Representation?
How many actual pension savers were consulted before this Accord? How many consumer advocates sat at the table when these reforms were drawn up?
This isn’t reform for savers. It’s extraction from savers—a backdoor way to turn our retirement pots into tools for government-led capital investment.
🛑 It’s Time to Push Back
Let’s be clear: our pensions are not the government’s piggy bank. They are our money, held in trust to provide future financial security—not to plug funding gaps or inflate venture capital bubbles.
If the government wants to back UK growth, let it do so transparently, through direct public investment, not by commandeering the nation’s retirement savings under the guise of policy.
✅ What Needs to Happen Now?
- Independent analysis of projected returns and risk from new asset allocations
- Transparent fee disclosures across all schemes
- Regulatory oversight equivalent to what IFAs must follow
- Opt-in consent from members for private market exposure
- A consumer voice at the table, not just asset managers and City firms
If you’re as concerned as I am, let’s raise our voices. Let’s demand transparency, accountability, and evidence-based policy. Because we can’t afford to sleepwalk into another pensions scandal.
Your Money or Your Life
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