Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the only candidate left in the running for the UK government's Personal Accounts administration bid, following the withdrawal of Great Western Retirement Services (GWRS) (Europe).

The Personal Accounts Delivery Authority (PADA) today announced that GWRS had withdrawn from the competitive dialogue process for scheme administration services, following the withdrawal of Logica UK and Arbejdsmarkedet Tillaegspension (ATP) Group earlier in the year.

Commenting on the announcement, Tim Jones, chief executive of PADA said: "We will continue our detailed discussions with Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS). They are an exceptionally strong bidder and we are making excellent progress but we need to conclude the procurement process appropriately and evaluate their proposals.

"Our priority is to get value for money for personal accounts scheme members and deliver them a solution that will meet our requirements - we are very confident we can do that."

The UK personal accounts scheme will be a trust-based occupational pension scheme, intended to complement existing workplace pension provision. Earlier this month, the UK's Chancellor announced that that the reforms were going ahead, and the employer duties would be staged in from October 2012 as planned. However, the government is adjusting some of the details of how the duties will be implemented and will announce details of that early next year.

The personal accounts scheme will launch in low volumes in 2011 and will be ready for the onset of employer duties from October 2012.

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