After serving six years on the AMPS Committee, three years of which as Chairman, I felt that it was the right time to step down and let someone else take the helm.

It has been an enjoyable and rewarding experience but it has also given me some of my greatest challenges. Thankfully things were made a lot easier by the great support I have had from my fellow committee members.

Without doubt the greatest of these encounters was when I was first appointed Chair. AMPS were in the midst of dealing with the proposed changes to capital adequacy. The Committee felt that the FCA had completely ignored the arguments against the use of AUA as a basis of calculating capital adequacy and had provided no evidence as to why they felt it was the best solution.

This led to AMPS much publicised attempt in trying to get the Court’s permission to proceed to bring judicial review proceedings against the FCA. Though we were unsuccessful I still feel it was the correct thing to do as it forced the FCA to provide more information than it had previously been prepared to do.

If I have one regret, it’s that I leave when our member firms are currently being challenged by HMRC on relief at source claims where there has been an in-specie contribution. I would have liked to have seen this through to conclusion but I’m confident that the Committee will do their upmost to try and resolve the matter satisfactorily.

As regards to the future of the SIPP & SSAS market, Financial Planning Today recently asked what I think will be the toughest challenges for the next year for Sipp providers and if I expect to see much more in the way of consolidation.

The main concerns have been pension liberation, relief at source on in-specie contributions and defending the industry against legal challenges being made by claim management firms.

I have the upmost confidence that the market will continue to flourish despite no decisive outcome from the Green Paper “Strengthening the incentive to save: a consultation on pension tax relief”. However, as we have seen, consolidation goes on unabated leaving less consumer choice. There appears still to be a hunger in the industry for acquisitions so I am sure there will be but not on the scale seen of late.

Neil MacGillivray, is an Honorary Lifetime Member of AMPS, having stepped down recently as chairman after three years in the role. He is head of technical support at James Hay. He manages James Hay Partnership’s Technical Support Unit of Tax, Trust and Pensions specialists and has over 30 years’ experience in financial services.