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TISA CALLS ON THE GOVERNMENT TO IMPROVE FINANCIAL OUTCOMES FOR ALL AHEAD OF THE 2022 SPRING STATEMENT

March 21, 2022

This year the UK is facing the worst cost of living crisis we’ve seen in a generation. Households are facing the biggest fall in disposable income for three decades. A perfect storm, which includes a 1.25 percentage point rise in National Insurance contributions from April, ballooning energy prices, and the Bank of England doubling its base interest rate to 0.5%, is threatening consumers. Further increases are anticipated to both interest rates and energy prices later this year.

The Investing and Saving Alliance (TISA), the consumer-focused financial services alliance, is calling on the Government to include specific measures laid out in their budget to help consumers navigate this tough time and ensure a financially secure future.

These are:

  • To support necessary legislative changes to increase consumer access to better quality financial guidance and support. According to FCA research published in December 2020, there are 52 million adults in the UK, of whom only 4 million received financial advice in the last 12 months. We call on the Government to acknowledge that relying on consumers pro-actively accessing financial advice (which can come at a significant cost to consumers) is not realistic. 

TISA believes that consumers need access to free, personalised support from their financial services providers.  But this requires legislative change and modifications to the FCA’s regulations around Financial Advice, much of which emanates from EU regulations.  We call on the Government to seize this Brexit opportunity, so a new legislative and regulatory regime around Financial Advice can be built that better suits the UK and the needs of its consumers.

  • To improve Auto Enrolment. The last official review of AE took place in 2017. As a result, the Department for Work and Pensions (“DWP”) agreed to:
  • reduce the minimum age to 18 (from 22); and
  • remove the lower earnings limit.

We call on the government to place the changes as agreed in 2017 into legislation, so employers and employees have greater clarity around when and how these will be implemented. Following consultations that showed an 8% contribution level will not provide consumers and adequate replacement income in retirement, TISA also call on the Government to support a second review of AE and for the remit of such review to include the impact that AE has on lower earners. This will enable additional flexibilities for this cohort to be explored.

  • To draw awareness to social care policies. We commend the Government for grasping the nettle of the country’s social care crisis and launching its social care policy. All attention has been on the National Insurance hike, while the benefits of the Government’s policy have not been “sold” to consumers. 

Furthermore, there is “devil in the detail” in how the Government’s cap works and what costs contribute towards the cap, which is not yet widely understood. TISA call on the Government to work with the industry and build a national awareness campaign that increases awareness of the benefits of the government’s policy in this area and assists consumers in planning for their future social care needs.

The concept of consumers taking responsibility for their future care needs to be normalised.  Otherwise, we risk future retirees planning too late, regardless of additional expenditure, and mis-relying on the Government’s support.

Prakash Chandramohan, strategic policy director at TISA, said: “TISA constantly reviews existing policies and regulation in light of its core mission: raising awareness of financial services products and services to improve financial wellbeing for all.

“As an industry, we need to find a way to provide consumers with the confidence and knowledge to make informed decisions. We must proactively communicate with financial services customers and ensure that people are aware of the support available during what will be a tough time for many. Changes to the advice-guidance boundary, enabled by Brexit, will ensure that support is provided.

“Furthermore, the Government needs to urgently implement agreed to changes in auto-enrolment to ensure the continued success of the scheme, so that everyone can rest assured they are saving for an adequate pension.

“I am confident that our proposals, including improving auto enrolment and increasing access to financial guidance, if implemented, would positively influence millions of UK financial services consumers and will bring significant long-term benefits to the UK economy.”

-ENDS-

Contact:  

Kuba Stawiski 

Cicero/AMO   

07856031906    

kuba.stawiski@cicero-group.com   

Notes for Editors

tisa@cicero-group.com

07856031906


The Investing and Saving Alliance (TISA) is a unique, rapidly growing membership organisation for UK financial services.   

Our ambition is to improve the financial wellbeing of all UK consumers. We do this by focusing the convening the power of our broad industry membership base around the key issues to deliver practical solutionsand devise innovative, evidence-based strategic proposals for government, policy makers and regulators that address major consumer issues.   

TISA membership is representative of all sectors of the financial services industry.   We have over 200-member firms involved in the supply and distribution of savings, investment products and associated services, including the UK’s major investment managers, retail banks, online platforms, insurance companies, pension providers, distributors, building societies, wealth managers, third party administrators, Fintech businesses, financial consultants, financial advisers, industry infrastructure providers and stockbrokers.   

As consumers, the financial services industry and the economy react to and recover from the effects of the pandemic, the importance of the three key pillars of work that TISA prioritises has never been more apparent:  

  • Strategic policy initiatives that influence policymakers regarding the financial wellbeing of UK consumers & thereby enhancing the environment within which the industry operates in the key areas of consumer guidance, retirement planning, later lifetime lending, vulnerable customers, financial education, savings and investments.  
  • TISA is recognised for the expert technical support provided to members on a range of operational and regulatory issues targeted at improving infrastructure and processes, establishing standards of good practice and the interpretation and implementation of new rules and regulations covering MiFID II, CASS, ESG/RSI, operational resilience, Cyber Risk, SM&CR and a range of other areas.  
  • Digital transformation initiatives that are driving ground-breaking innovation and the development of industry infrastructure for greater operational effectiveness and revenue promoting opportunity for firms.  TISA has become a major industry delivery organisation for consumer focused, digital industry infrastructure initiatives – TISAtech (a digital marketplace that brings together financial institutions and FinTechs for greater collaboration and innovation) and TURN (TISA Universal Reporting Network – a digital platform providing a secure data exchange for financial services using blockchain technology) – alongside projects Digital ID and Open Savings & Investment. This reflects TISA’s commitment to open standards and independent governance.