Breaking the rules

Under the A-Day regulations, small self-administered schemes (SSAS) were no longer required to have a pensioneer trustee. Pensioneer trustees are qualified professionals authorised by HM Revenue & Customs to oversee scheme operation. Instead, they had to have a scheme administrator who registered as such with HM Revenue & Customs. There was no requirement for the scheme administrator to have any professional knowledge whatsoever of the pension arrangements for which they acted as administrator. The obvious result was that when the SSAS clients heard they no longer needed to pay for...