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

PASA publishes guidance on AI in pensions administration

On 28 October 2025, PASA published new guidance on the use of AI in pensions administration. The guidance is intended to provide “practical support” for schemes, administrators and trustees to understand the risks and opportunities of using AI within pensions administration. It also highlights “high-quality data as the bedrock of AI” and sets out examples of current and emerging uses of AI in pensions, from chatbots and predictive analytics to fraud detection and intelligent document processing, alongside “clear risk management considerations”.

PDP publishes blog to mark one year until connection deadline

The PDP published a new blog on 31 October 2025 to highlight a “significant marker”. There is now just one year remaining until the final connection deadline of 31 October 2026, by which time all in-scope pension providers and schemes must have connected to the pensions dashboards ecosystem.

The blog signposts the connection guidance on the PDP website and available support.

FRC publishes guidance to support stewardship code reporting

On 30 October 2025, the FRC published its guidance to the UK Stewardship Code 2026. A draft version of the guidance was published in June 2025 to support applicants’ obligations to report against the revised code and has now been finalised following feedback.

The guidance is “optional and not prescriptive”. It offers suggestions for the types of information organisations might choose to include in their reporting to explain their approach to stewardship. It is intended to reflect the flexible nature of the code, which recognises that organisations differ in size, structure, and investment strategy, and therefore exercise stewardship in different ways.

The FRC intends to engage with signatories throughout 2026 to support their transition to reporting against the updated code.

HMRC publishes pensions schemes newsletter 174

On 30 October 2025, HMRC published its latest pensions schemes newsletter. It includes information on:

  • submitting a scheme return for a pension scheme that has been wound up
  • actions non-UK pension scheme administrators must take before 6 April 2026 to remain compliant (all administrators must be UK resident on and from this date), and
  • common themes raised following HMRC’s clarification on returning tax free lump sums.