Jonathan Smart FIA

Jonathan advises trustees and sponsors of defined benefit (DB) pension schemes, providing strategic actuarial and consultancy advice on a wide variety of issues as they move towards buyout or towards running off their schemes.

Jonathan leads the client relationships for his own portfolio of clients, covering all the Trustee services that Barnett Waddingham provides. As Scheme Actuary, Jonathan enables his clients to understand, effectively manage and monitor their pension scheme risks as they target meeting member benefits in full. He has strong, effective and longstanding relationships with his clients, delivering tailored advice appropriate to each trustee board and assisting them in navigating change in the pensions landscape.

Jonathan has wide experience of working with a varied range of UK businesses, overseas parent companies and their DB schemes. He currently advises pension schemes ranging in size from £10 million to £1 billion.

Significant experience:

• Scheme Actuary advice regarding integrated funding and investment strategies alongside setting and monitoring journey plans towards an ultimate goal of buyout
• supporting trustees in funding negotiations with their sponsoring employer and in mitigating employer covenant risk
• advice regarding assessment of potential buy-ins for mature pension schemes
• short term secondment as in-house UK pensions manager at a global professional services company dealing with defined benefit and defined contribution arrangements
• advice on UK and international accounting disclosures to employers
• advice on wider pension scheme matters, including reviewing member option terms, closure to new members, retirement communication exercises, PPF levy mitigation, governance arrangements and keeping trustees abreast of current pensions issues.

Other expertise:

• Strong interest in compliance matters, having been compliance representative for the Amersham office for 8 years
• Led one of the Amersham Actuarial Consulting teams of 15 qualified and trainee actuaries in Amersham for over 5 years, being responsible for the team’s development and managing client workflow