I help pension scheme trustees and their sponsors run their pensions schemes effectively and manage legal risk appropriately. My current focus is working with trustees and sponsors of defined benefit schemes to make sure their benefits are sufficiently accurate to form the basis of a journey plan to buy out or self sufficiency. As schemes become better funded a higher degree of accuracy in the benefits payable is an important part of the funding and investment de-risking journey. No legal profile would be complete without a mention of GMP equalisation and past transfers. The key is to be sensible and proportionate. Trustees must address this issue, but they do not need to nail it down to the decimal points.Several of my clients are about to go into are in winding-up and are looking at post buy-out liability and who will hold it. Residual risks cover from the insurers is harder to get and having done due diligence for such cover, I appreciate the issues in getting such cover and the impact of carve outs. The run off cover market is also challenging at the moment and Trustees need to think more about how they run the winding-up process to settle known issues and be able to defeat the unknown unknowns should they arise.I was privileged to be the legal co-author of the recent Institute and Faculty of Actuaries working party paper on Target End States for Defined Benefit Pension Schemes. This paper recommends that we move the focus to member outcomes and work collaboratively together to achieve those.I am also a specialist pensions investments lawyer which means I help clients identify the key legal risks in investment contracts so they know what they are signing up to and do a lot of work in relation to environmental, social and governance (ESG) and climate change issues. As well as working on trustee policies, I have been involved in communication of policies to members as more become interested in this area.
Listed skills include Legal Issues, Employee Benefits, Tax Law, Insurance, and 23 others.
