It is 15 years since claims of inflated and opaque charges on pensions first became widely reported, not least by The Herald.
Workers who had taken out pensions in the early 1990s typically discovered that after 10 years they had only just paid back the commissions paid to those who sold them, and then faced hefty ongoing annual fees. That prompted the Labour government to promote 'stakeholder pensions' as a new kitemark, with a maximum charge of 1 per cent.
But those already paying into a pension could easily have been left stranded in an overcharged plan, subsidising the cuts to new customers.
Standard Life, in those days a mutual, grasped the nettle and 'repriced' most existing plans to 1 per cent, and in 2006 it also scrapped upfront commissions, eight years ahead of rivals such as Aviva and Aegon.
The coalition government this year announced a 0.75 per cent price cap on new auto-enrolment pensions. Commission is to be outlawed by 2016, so is the 'active member discount' where people who leave pay a higher rate, and next April providers will have new independent governance committees to scrutinise their plans.
Pensions minister Steve Webb has this month also promised 'pot follows member' legislation, aimed at keeping all a worker's pensions together. But it will not happen in this Parliament.
Whatever the outcome, the industry expects it to be 'forward-looking', not retroactive. So it looks as though much of the insurers' surplus profit will never find its way back to those who have been overcharged.
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