Pension specialist Xafinity has called on the industry and regulators to join forces to fight so-called "pension liberation fraud" whereby consumers are encourage to "unlock" or cash in their pension early without considering other options.
Xafinity, which provides Sips and SSASs, is supportive of The Pension Regulator's pension liberation information campaign to increase awareness for scheme providers, pension professionals and customers.
Xafinity believes the regulator should implement an industry wide sharing of resources in order to increase efficiencies in tackling liberation fraud and help minimise wastage across the industry in duplicating effort.
Xafinity is also calling on the HMRC to review the process for registering a pension scheme. The current process means that fraudulent schemes can be registered with ease, it says.
Jamie Taylor, business development manager, Xafinity, said: "Xafinity believes the best way for the industry to tackle pensions liberation fraud is for a central sharing of resources. This would prevent providers and regulatory bodies duplicating work and costs.
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"For example under the current guidelines if Xafinity 'flags' a potential liberation scheme, we can't communicate this to other providers and they will have to carry out their own investigations and bring those to the attention of the regulators. The Pension Regulator doesn't tell you the outcome of their investigations, so it's all a bit of a farce!
"We welcome the use of Action Fraud as the primary agency to report to, rather than picking between HMRC, SOCA, FSA, TPR or reporting to all of them, although there is a failure to consider statutory reporting to SOCA. To effectively challenge this problem the industry needs to act quickly and as one; sharing resources about liberation scams and communicating the outcomes of investigations in a single place is the best way to do that."
Xafinity has managed SSAS schemes since 1979 and SIPP since 2004 and has built a team of 45 specialised staff based in Stirling.