Wheatley, taking questions from the Treasury Select Committee (TSC) on Tuesday morning, said historical concerns with the MAS have centred on its marketing spend, not its ability to deliver money or debt advice services.
The MAS and The Pensions Advisory Service (TPAS) have been tasked by the Treasury to develop mechanisms to deliver free, independent guidance to all retirees who request it from April next year.
That followed a promise by George Osborne at Budget 2014 that all retirees would have access to support in the wake of legislative changes giving people greater choice about how to access and spend their retirement savings.
Last year, a sub-committee of the TSC accused the MAS of overspending on marketing and not putting enough resources towards service delivery.
Its conclusions followed a year-long review by MPs, who granted the body a “stay of execution” until the findings of a government review into the MAS’s objectives are published.
But Wheatley said the TSC’s concerns were not necessarily linked to its ability to deliver pensions guidance.
“I think questions of [the MAS’s] historial role have been whether marketing budget has been well spent. That’s a different question. I have confidence in the board and management that MAS is a competent organisation.”
He said the challenge for MAS related to how it would “gear up” to handling possibly hundreds of thousands of customer queries and appointments.
Wheatley said there was always a risk of mis-selling with propositions such as that proposed in the Budget, but that any ‘selling’ would not be done by MAS or TPAS, but by financial advisers and providers, who are subject to its regulatory regime and therefore held to account.
He suggested the outcome of many guidance sessions would be, simply, “you should speak to an IFA”.
Wheatley and FCA chairman John Griffith-Jones faced questions from the TSC on 9 September. Most of the committee’s questioning centred on money laundering and high frequency trading.
