7 Days is a weekly round up of developments in pensions, normally published on Monday afternoons. We collate this information from key industry sources, such as the DWP, HMRC and TPR.

In this 7 Days

HMRC presses ahead with plans to apply IHT to unused pension funds and death benefits

On 21 July 2025, HMRC published a response to its recent consultation on IHT, alongside a policy paper and draft legislation.

The Government is going ahead with plans to include most unused pension funds and death benefits in the value of an individual’s estate for IHT purposes from 6 April 2027. However, all death in service benefits payable from registered pension schemes will be out of scope of IHT, whether discretionary or non-discretionary.

In addition, having listened to industry feedback, HMRC has made some important changes to its original proposals, including that personal representatives (“PRs”) rather than pension scheme administrators (“PSAs”) will be primarily liable for reporting and paying IHT on any unused pension funds and death benefits. However, pension beneficiaries may be able to give notice requiring their scheme’s PSA to pay the IHT on their behalf directly to HMRC.

The Government has published draft legislation to implement these changes for technical consultation. The deadline for responses is 15 September 2025. As the reporting and paying processes will require information to be shared between PSAs, PRs and HMRC at various points, the Government will consult separately on any necessary changes to legislation to facilitate this “in due course”.

For further details, please see our Alert.

TPR publishes blog on dashboard readiness

TPR published its Annual Dashboard Readiness Survey on 24 July 2025, along with an accompanying blog post. The research found that “80% of schemes” are on track to connect to the pension dashboards ecosystem by or before their “connect-by-date” in DWP guidance but there is “still a lot of work to do” to make sure data is up to date and available digitally. One in four schemes holds some data in a non-digital form and half of schemes offering DB benefits do not hold recent DB value data for all members.

“In the coming months”, TPR intends to meet with the largest schemes in the country to scrutinize their preparation for dashboards and launch a campaign targeting the hundreds of medium-sized schemes due to connect in 2026 to make sure that they are on track to provide data.

Pensions Minister hosts VFM roundtable

The Pensions Minister held a roundtable on 22 July 2025 to discuss the “Pound for Pound” initiative – a pilot group of providers brought together by People’s Pension, which includes Aviva, Smart Pension, TPT Retirement Solutions, L&G and NatWest Cushon. The initiative will explore how the UK pensions market can move beyond cost-based comparisons and instead assess performance through broader value-based metrics, understanding the practicalities of a process that will shift market conversations away from cost towards value.

The participants at the roundtable agreed that “now is the time” to collaborate with Government and the wider industry in defining and embedding a robust and fit for purpose VFM regime. The discussion focused on how lessons from Australia and insights from providers could inform regulatory thinking and support the development of the Pension Schemes Bill.

PPI publishes report on saving among low earners

On 23 July 2025, the Pensions Policy Institute published its first report in a series titled “From Payslip to Pension: Life Course Impacts on Retirement Saving Among Low Earners”.

The first of five outputs in this series, the report investigates persistent low earning (earning less than a full-time living wage for an extended period of time).