"The government proposals over the next 10 years would leave us with 10 very large pension schemes. They would only have 10 to 12 very large clients.
"If they supported that, they would be putting themselves out of a job. That's why there's a massive resistance."
Pension lawyers are not in total disagreement on this point.
Jarvis at Macfarlanes says: "[If] the government does something bold and legislates going forward that employers can only contribute to, say, master trusts, that would create legal challenges from other pension schemes because employers couldn't contribute.
"If you say employers can't contribute to these types of schemes, you've immediately wiped out the business of these pension providers."
Opportunity knocks
However, the pension providers themselves, especially the large ones, are sensing an opportunity.
Ambery at Standard Life says: "We have a commercial opportunity because there's the ability to reach more members and provide them with better outcomes."
Because of the company's master trust, which is one of the larger ones at £8.8bn, and its recognised brand among consumers, he sees a situation where the business can build on what they have and draw in more members.
But more than that, he is anticipating a wave of consolidation, comparable to a wave of mergers and acquisitions in a consolidating industry.
He adds: "It's a survival of the fittest, but survival of offering best value. However, you must be of sufficient standing and size."
As a more immediate way forward, the detractors are requesting that, firstly, everything else should be allowed to bed down, primarily because there is so much happening already: value for money framework, small pots consolidation, pension dashboard, to name a few.
Jarvis says: "You've got all these other government-led initiatives, wouldn't it be better to focus on some of these initiatives that are on at the moment?"
But secondly, many of the changes already happening might resolve some of the questions on their own.
Plans are afoot to get the pension dashboard to an operational stage. This alone may do a lot of the heavy lifting of member engagement and focus people's minds about doing their own consolidation, once they see the number of pots they have already.
The value for money framework is already forcing schemes to focus much more on member outcomes, and prompt them to consolidate at scheme level, in any case for all the reasons outlined here.
And small pots consolidation deals with the small deferred pots.
A DWP spokesperson says: "A lifetime provider model that allows workers to have one pot for life could reduce barriers to engagement and make it easier to understand and plan for retirement.
