The SIPP pension is getting a due-diligence rulebook

The self-invested personal pension has always carried a slightly double identity. For engaged savers, a SIPP can look like flexibility: one pension wrapper, more control over the investments inside it, and a route into platforms or assets that a standard pension may not offer. For regulators, it is also a place where complex assets, trustees, introducers and real retirement money can meet.

That second identity is now getting a clearer rulebook. The Financial Conduct Authority has opened a consultation on self-invested personal pension firms, focused on due diligence and the handling of pension scheme money and assets. The consultation opened on 22 June 2026 and closes on 24 August 2026, with a final policy statement expected in the first half of 2027.

This is not a story about a new product, a market tip or a signal about where pension money ought to go. It is a quieter consumer story about the checks that sit behind a pension wrapper. The FCA says most SIPP providers are already doing the right thing, but it has also found poor due diligence, weak record keeping and gaps in how some firms protect money and assets.

The scale makes the detail worth noticing. In the FCA's consultation paper, SIPP assets under administration reached about £567 billion in 2024, across 5.3 million consumers. The FCA says that was nearly a third of the assets under administration in FCA-authorised defined contribution pensions. A niche-sounding pension wrapper is not niche when measured in household retirement savings.

The first strand of the proposal is due diligence. In plain English, the regulator wants clearer rules on the checks SIPP firms make around investments, introducers and related arrangements. The FCA says the aim is to make sure investments placed in a SIPP are genuine and involve a credible investment proposition. The point is not to turn every SIPP operator into a personal adviser assessing each customer's suitability. It is to set a firmer baseline for spotting arrangements that may be implausible, fraudulent or poorly controlled before pension money is exposed to them.

That distinction matters. A due-diligence rule does not make an investment safe. It does not make a pension decision suitable for a particular household. It does not remove the ordinary risks of investing, including loss. It means the firm operating the wrapper has clearer regulatory expectations around the gatekeeping work that happens before and around the assets a SIPP can hold.

The second strand is more technical but just as important: a proposed Pension Scheme Money and Assets regime, shortened by the FCA to PSM&A. This would apply where a personal pension scheme uses an unauthorised trustee company to hold or receive pension scheme money or assets. The FCA says the regime is intended to make sure money and assets are securely held, records are accurate and complete, reconciliations happen regularly, discrepancies are investigated promptly, and wind-downs or transfers are less disruptive.

The consultation paper explains why that infrastructure matters after things go wrong. It cites 26 SIPP operator failures between 2010 and 2025, and estimates uncompensated consumer losses of about £526 million from 22 failures. That figure is not a prediction about current providers. It is a reminder that pension administration is not just paperwork. Weak books and records can become a practical problem when a firm fails, a scheme transfers or consumers try to establish what they own.

The FCA's March 2026 pensions priorities report also gives the wider context. The regulator describes pensions as crucial to almost everybody in the UK, with 69% of non-retirees having a pension in accumulation in May 2024. It also says contract-based defined contribution pensions, the FCA's main area of focus, account for £1.36 trillion of pension market assets. In that setting, stronger SIPP rules sit within a larger push to modernise long-term savings without pretending that every saver wants the same level of control.

For readers, the useful lens is modest. If a pension provider, platform or adviser talks more about investment due diligence, trustee structures, custody, records or wind-down arrangements, those words may be part of the regulatory story now moving through consultation. They are not decorative compliance language. They describe the machinery that helps a pension wrapper work when markets are ordinary, and when a firm is under stress.

There is also a useful boundary to hold. The FCA consultation does not say that SIPPs are right for everyone, wrong for everyone or newly risk-free. It does not convert complex assets into simple ones. It does not replace regulated financial advice for people who need personal recommendations. The proposed rules are about standards for firms, not instructions for individual savers.

That is why the story is less dramatic than the word pension often makes it sound. The regulator is not asking households to rush. It is asking for views on how SIPP firms check what they allow, how they record what they hold, and how pension money and assets are protected where existing client-asset rules may not fit neatly. A better rulebook is not the same thing as certainty, but in a market holding hundreds of billions of pounds, the plumbing deserves attention.