Our first stage is to help you define where you are going, when you want to get there by and how much risk you are willing to take that your journey goes off course. Knowing whether you are looking to get to buyout within a set time, or plan to run on indefinitely, is critical in determining your whole strategy.

We focus on helping trustees and scheme sponsors identify the most appropriate goal for their unique circumstances, and ensuring all parties are joined-up in trying to achieve that goal.

Once you know your goal, you need to make sure you have the best strategy to get there. This includes the investment strategy, de-risking plan, funding strategy, approach to member options and anything else that may impact the financial future of the scheme.

Our philosophy is to bring everything back to the central question – is this strategy the best one to help the trustees and sponsor achieve their ultimate goal? This philosophy helps focus time and expense on the most important issues facing trustees and sponsors, and makes sure the decisions taken are in their long-term interests and those of the members.

Of course, there will always be a degree of uncertainty on your DB endgame journey. So it’s important to effectively monitor progress and have accurate and timely information, enabling you to confidently address threats and seize opportunities when they arise.

We focus on helping our clients think through the potential ‘what-ifs’ in advance, so you are prepared to take decisive action. We also use our Illuminate system to give our clients the most up-to-date information available on the scheme’s finances and their progress towards endgame.

If you are targeting a transaction (insurer or other consolidator) you will need to go through an exercise to get your scheme ‘transaction ready’. A key part of our approach is to map out these actions early – so you know what tasks are needed, when to start them, and how these fit in with the strategic plan timings.

Our experience tells us the key to success is having your actuarial and administration services work very closely together to establish a joined-up plan to get over the practical hurdles.

Many trustees and sponsors are targeting an eventual transaction and wind-up – but how much thought have you given to how that buyout and wind-up will be executed, and how those steps interact?

Our actuarial, admin and risk transfer consultants, alongside our wind-up team, work closely together when designing the plan and executing the transaction. This makes sure the transaction works as intended, and everything is aligned so that we can then go forward with an effective wind-up of the scheme, ensuring good outcomes for all members.