Recommendation 18

This committee has previously found similar issues with how government provides or oversees support for people making complex or long-term financial decisions, including through the regulation of independent financial advice. Most recently, our inquiry last year into the British Steel pension scheme found that pensions regulators had failed to provide adequate information and support to scheme members to make decisions within tight deadlines, leading to unsuitable financial advice that caused serious financial harm. We concluded that the regulatory system had left pension scheme members open to being manipulated and taken advantage of by unscrupulous financial advisers, and that regulated financial bodies were still not clear on what was expected of them.38