INNER WORKINGS TECHNOLOGY IS NOT THE PROBLEM, IT’S THE SOLUTION
by Tom Murray Head of Product Strategy LifePlus Solution, Majesco There has been a lot in the news recently about the difficulties involved in prosecuting pension scammers operating on the Internet. A large number of people have fallen victim to these scammers who advertise tempting offers on digital platforms, and the government seems powerless to stop it. Estimates put the amount of loss as high as £10 billion since 2015. Even the governor of the Bank of England has joined the chorus, stating that more people are at risk from financial fraud online than through the more regulated off-line media such as newspapers and television. It has led to calls to increase the level of regulation on tech platforms, making them responsible for the scammers advertisements that they host. Tech platforms are everyone’s bête noire at the moment. It is hard to defend them when, as the House of Commons Work & Pensions Committee was quick to point out, they are earning money from hosting scam advertisements and then making even more from publishing government warnings against them. This anti-tech approach is very dangerous. Taking the easy way out by finding a bogeyman to blame is not really looking at the problem correctly. The government has stated that technology platforms
have been failing pension savers. However, whether platforms have a duty towards pension savers in particular is a debatable point. They certainly don’t have as much responsibility as the government do, given its push to increase pension saving throughout the UK. Over recent years, it has been the government that has constantly trumpeted their view that individuals are best to decide for themselves what to do with their lifetime pension savings and therefore championed the pension freedoms approach. They washed their hands of telling people what to do with their savings but failed to really think through the dangers involved. Now that the level of pension scams has increased significantly, the government seems to want to blame the tech industry. A better approach would be to understand the problem at a more fundamental level and enlist technology firms to help solve it. In the first place, we have to recognise that the level of financial education is low across much of the population. Given the highly successful approach to increasing the number of pension savers through the auto-enrolment scheme, this means we now have a much larger pool of people with savings, making
