Securing benefits for members on an industry-wide pension scheme

We have successfully secured benefits for members of an industry-wide pension scheme in full with an insurance company and will soon complete the winding up of that scheme.

We believe that this is a unique achievement in the pensions industry and is the result of over ten years' work in which we transformed the scheme from a state where it was unclear what benefits should even be provided to one where pensions are now fully insured and employers are free from any ongoing risk.

At the time of our appointment:

• there was uncertainty over what benefits the scheme should be providing to its members;
• there were a large number of employers who participated in the scheme and no effective mechanism for obtaining their input when it was required for consultation or decisions; and
• each of the employers in the scheme was subject to the risk of being required to fund the scheme’s liabilities.

Our work on this scheme was recognised as we were a finalist in the 2017 UK Pension Scheme of the Year awards.