Recommendation 22

When the pension freedoms were introduced, a guidance guarantee was presented as a key pillar of the reforms supporting people making use of the new range of choices available to them. Everyone with a defined contribution pension is entitled to free impartial guidance from Pension Wise when they come to access their pension. The Minister for Pensions and Financial Inclusion has agreed that having a Pension Wise appointment should be the norm. We recommend that DWP should set out a plan for how this will be achieved and a timetable for getting there. Pension Wise is an important tool to prevent scams and we will look further at its role, within the new MoneyHelper brand, in the next part of our inquiry on accessing pension savings.