'Serious issues' with new capital adequacy rules

The Association of Member-Directed Pension Schemes has declared it has "serious issues" with aspects of the new capital adequacy rules. The FCA announced the much awaited changes for Sipp operators on Monday.AMPS has particularly questioned the use of assets under administration as the basis for calculating capital adequacy.It fears the move could have major implications, possibly even causing some Sipp firms to fail.In a statement, it said: "AMPS has serious issues with the use of AUA as the basis for calculating capital adequacy for a number of reasons. {desktop}{/desktop}{mobile}{/mobile} "If the value of assets falls but the number of Sipps remains unchanged, then the capital adequacy requirements reduces but the costs remain the same."In terms of the non standard assets these are hard to transfer and may have a low or even negligible value at that time, leaving insufficient capital to meet on going costs."Finally a demand for a cash injection at short notice such as a 10% increase in value of AUA can result in a 5% increase in capital adequacy. Such an increase for additional capital could force perfectly good Sipp firms to fail."The organsiation said there was little support for the use of AUA as the basis for calculating capital adequacy based on 55 out of the 57 responses to the consultation it saw.It said there were various alternative solutions which "would have more fairly reflected the true cost and less likely to be open to arbitrage".It said: "The strong preference within the industry was for the calculation to be based on the number of Sipps administered by a firm."However, it welcomed National Savings & Investment products, term deposits and ETFs being added to the standard asset list.AMPS also supported the move to increase the minimum capital requirement from £5,000 to £20,000.

'Serious issues' with new capital adequacy rules

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