Common Declarations Standards
Save time and costs for both ceding and receiving schemes.
Pension transfers can be an immense source of frustration for customers and firms alike. Transfer delays commonly take place, causing administrative headaches and extra workload for schemes, and anxiety for customers relying on a quick transfer process. This can lead to both reputational damage and additional costs to firms.
How can Criterion help?
Criterion Standards
The Criterion Common Declaration Standards are sets of commonly agreed legal wording and data that are used in different categories of the pension transfer.
The Common Transfer Declarations Standards help to facilitate more than one million pension transfers each year and streamline processes by cutting end-to-end times and costs.
These Standards identify data and statements from the consumer by the ceding scheme to be collected on that scheme's behalf as part of the receiving scheme's transfer application process. This means that transfers can be completed in many cases without the ceding scheme needing to make additional contact with the consumer, thus reducing unnecessary communication and transfer delays and enabling pension providers to focus on higher-value activities.
The Common Declarations are split into three categories:
- Common Bulk Transfer Declaration - supports applications being made by clients within a bulk transfer money purchase scheme.
- Common Annuity Declaration - supports applications being made by clients for transfers into Annuities and Immediate Vesting Personal Pensions.
- Common Transfer Declaration - supports applications being made by clients within a money purchase scheme.
A solution managed by the industry, for the industry
Criterion collaborates with the pensions industry and legal experts to develop and evolve the Declarations, coordinating implementation and facilitating governance across more than 95 market-leading pensions brands.
Our unique approach to collaboration, refined and proven across more than 30 years, delivers solutions that are specified, designed and approved by subject-matter experts from across the industry.
That expertise is baked into Criterion’s Standards, giving organisations confidence that Standards-based integration will be straightforward to deploy and will meet the need.
We keep the collaborative approach going to ensure the industry is sustainable, working with experts to ensure that our Standards keep pace with market innovation, consumer trends and the regulatory environment.
Get in touch
Register to get access to our Common Declaration Standards.
Please note, that if you’re a pension scheme, provider, trustee, manager or administrator who wants to take time and cost out of your transfer processes, you can get the Criterion Common Declarations free of charge.
If you would like to discuss our Common Declarations Standards, then please email us at [email protected].