Recommendation 29

The pensions and wider financial services industry has a strong reputational interest in preventing scams. The regulators responsible for protecting the reputations and consumers of these industries are largely levy funded to meet this interest. Levy payers, particularly those regulated by the FCA paying into the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, have seen their costs rise in recent years and rightly expect the regulators demonstrate that levies are both set at a reasonable level and spent effectively on enforcement action. If regulators were more effective in preventing pension scams, then the need for compensation would be reduced and the levy on the industry would be lower.