DB Credentials

Our experience

LawDeb is currently appointed as Independent Professional Pension Trustee (IPT) to over 130 DB schemes. Half of these are appointments as Chair and Corporate Sole Trustee (CST).

Of these 45 have under £100m and 5 have over £10bn in assets under management. In total we serve over 1 million members across these schemes.

Clients include Sainsbury's, Premier Foods, Heathrow Airport, Hogan Lovells and Ultra Electronics.

We are also appointed as trustee to the Clara DB Superfund, a consolidation vehicle designed to support smaller schemes in achieving economies of scale.

The time taken to secure benefits for all our members and finally wind up the Amylum UK Group Pension Scheme was much earlier than might otherwise have been the case, thanks to the knowledge, experience and governance of LawDeb.

Steve Amor, Head of Group Pensions, Tate & Lyle

Challenges for DB schemes

Over the last few years the task of delivering pension promises has grown ever more complicated as:

• members receive greater freedoms
• pressure continues on sponsor balance sheets
• the Pension Regulator raises the bar

DB schemes will need to respond to new funding standards and decide on and deliver the end game. They will also need to address newer challenges  such as GMP equalisation and IORP2. There is likely to be more scrutiny of the impact of corporate transactions and earlier regulatory intervention when concerns arise.

Ensuring a suitable journey plan and end game are in place is key to success.

Our DB expertise

Thanks to the number of schemes LawDeb’s 22-strong trustee team works with and our collaborative, team approach we have extensive experience of supporting DB schemes in deciding on the most suitable end game for their members and delivering it.

We consider a wide-range of things when doing this including:

• Governance requirements
• Delivering value for members
• Investment strategies
• Stakeholder and Board requirements
• Funding and liability management

Our broad range of professional backgrounds (investment, banking, accounting, legal, actuarial, governance and pension management) provide expertise in each of these areas and add genuine value to the trustee boards on which we sit.

“As a result of working with LawDeb as sole trustee on a closed DB scheme, we discussed and agreed an actuarial valuation with the sponsoring employer and their advisers at a single meeting, delivering considerable efficiencies”.

Steve Hitchiner - Partner, Barnett Waddingham