Pension trustees

The UK pensions landscape is complex, with ever-evolving challenges. Pension trustees require professional pensions advice from industry experts.

Our pensions professionals advise trustees on all aspects of pensions law, from the day-to-day management of their pension schemes to the legal aspects of major projects and transactions. 

We advise a wide range of local, national and international clients across numerous sectors including industrial engineering, pharmaceuticals and financial services. The schemes that we advise include defined benefit schemes with assets ranging from £500,000 to over £3bn, defined contribution occupational pension schemes, contract-based schemes, small self-administered schemes as well as self-invested personal pensions.

The rules governing pensions represent one of the fastest-evolving parts of the UK regulatory landscape. Keeping pace with that change can be a tough task when trustees need to focus on the day-to-day running of a pension scheme. Our team has extensive experience with pension regulatory compliance issues affecting schemes of all sizes. We advise our trustee clients on dealing with the rigorous regulatory requirements and maintaining up-to-date best practice.

Trustees must administer their pension scheme in accordance with its rules; the majority of court cases involving pensions schemes relate to the interpretation of the particular scheme’s rules or historic drafting errors. Trustees also have a legal obligation to have a good working knowledge of the scheme documentation. This means keeping the rules up-to-date and user-friendly whilst ensuring that they accurately reflect the parties’ intentions. Our pensions experts help trustees ensure that their pension scheme documentation is well-drafted, compliant and easy to use. 

We understand that pension risk management is top of most trustees’ agenda. Our highly skilled team works with trustees to identify and implement solutions which can help remove risk for the employer without prejudicing (and in many cases actually enhancing) the security of members’ benefits.

If things do unfortunately go wrong, our experts guide trustees through the technical minefield of pensions disputes. We take a pragmatic approach and see court as a last resort. Where alternative dispute resolution is deemed a more appropriate avenue, we have access to in-house specialists in adjudication, arbitration and mediation. But if litigation proves to be the only way forward, we have the right experience to manage complex litigation. Our aim is always to resolve pension disputes as fast as possible with minimum fuss.