Economic uncertainties and frequent changes to legislation can make it challenging for trustees of defined benefit (DB) schemes to align their conclusions on the level of support sponsoring employers can provide.

Similarly, employers face challenges in understanding how their performance and structural changes impact upon the support that is required of them, and how they can minimise costs and efficiently manage schemes in the longer term. 

We provide award-winning pension scheme advice to both trustees and employers. We work collaboratively with all stakeholders, tailoring our services to their circumstances, and specialise in simplifying complex issues around managing, reducing and removing pension scheme risk. We also offer the depth of experience you would expect from a major consultancy firm of our size, one which is plugged into an unrivalled international network of member firms.

Since our team formed in 2004, we have acted in over 400 triennial valuation and transaction-based assignments. We have worked closely with both The Pensions Regulator (TPR) and the Pension Protection Fund (PPF), providing us with a detailed insight into how these key bodies operate.

We have acted as lead advisers in a number of high-profile, pension-centric corporate restructurings and have created and installed ground-breaking solutions to what seemed to be complex, and indeed intractable, scheme funding problems.

Our experience includes:

• Employer covenant assessments and advice
• Integrated funding and integrated risk management
• Liability management and risk reduction
• Pension scheme consolidation vehicles: superfunds
• Pension scheme restructuring
• Pension scheme transaction advisory

In addition to the statutory requirements associated with DB scheme funding and upon events led by corporate activity, there are many other times when trustees, sponsors or other stakeholders of DB pension schemes will require or benefit from professional advice. Our specialists can also assist with:

• Pension disclosures for company accounts
• Funding obligations for both existing and newly set up Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) employers
• Risk and governance support
• PPF levy mitigation
• Expert actuarial advice in legal claim situations

In the coming years we look forward to applying our experience and expertise to help our trustee and employer clients find innovative solutions that work for their DB pension schemes, and to using proactive integrated risk management to address the competing demands of covenant, funding and investment risks.