Our Insights

DB Pension Scheme convergence with buy-out model

The forthcoming Pension Schemes Bill is likely to contain legislation to make it easier for defined benefit pension scheme surplus to be returned to sponsors. The Government believes employers can use these funds “to increase the productivity of their businesses – to boost wages and drive growth or unlock more money for pension scheme members.” The question now is what is the right model for running on a pension scheme with surplus extraction as an option?

13 minute read

Behind the Curtain: Navigating the Maze of Private Asset Fund Activities

With the ongoing growth of private market allocations within UK pension schemes the challenge of managing the ongoing investment, operational, legal, and tax related tasks is becoming more and more pressing. Getting these things right is central to maximising value from allocations to private market funds.

10 minute read

What does the revolving door of Pensions Ministers mean for pensions policy?

By its very nature, pensions policy needs to be long-term and consistent in order to deliver. Unfortunately, governments are quite often much more short-termist in their thinking, driven predominantly by electoral cycles. While there have been some notable successes – automatic enrolment (AE) being the main one - in recent years pensions policy appears to have hit the buffers and the high turnover of Pensions Ministers doesn’t help.

5 minute read

Pensions review – which way for DB?

As the pensions review gets underway, there’s one section of the market that’s out of scope – defined benefit (DB) schemes. The terms of reference for the review which were published over the summer state: “Ongoing policy development with respect to defined benefit workplace pensions schemes will remain separate from the review.” To exclude such a large section of the market from the government’s review in some ways feels counterintuitive.

5 minute read

The journey to net zero

Four years on from setting a 2035 net zero goal for the BT Pension Scheme, what progress has been made and what have we learned?

7 minute read

What does a new Labour government mean for the pensions sector?

During the election campaign, pensions was a hot topic. But the focus was squarely on the state pension with the Triple Lock and ‘Triple Lock Plus’ the main battlegrounds. However, turn the pages of the Labour Party Manifesto and you’d find 15 mentions of ‘pension’ or ‘pensioner’. Now that Sir Keir Starmer has the keys to Downing Street what can the pensions industry expect?

5 minute read

Stepping up digital services with fully online retirements

When Brightwell launched a new online portal for BTPS members in May 2021, we designed a retirement modeller that gave members the ability to run their own retirement quotes for all the different permutations of pension option open to them.

5 minute read

The price of risk aversion for defined benefit pension schemes

There has been a lot of talk in recent months about whether UK defined benefit (DB) pension schemes are too risk averse when it comes to investments. Whilst deliberate de-risking of investment portfolios for closed DB schemes is arguably a logical approach, is risk aversion hard-wired into the sector and is this a problem?

6 minute read

Surplus extraction – a hefty prize but what’s the price?

Up until very recently, ‘DB pension schemes’ and ‘surplus’ were not phrases often heard in the same sentence. But recent figures from The Pensions Regulator (TPR) suggests that out of c.5,000 DB schemes, over 3,750 are now in surplus on a low dependency basis with a further 950 schemes approaching surplus. The aggregate surplus totals a staggering £250bn, roughly 17% of total DB assets.

6 minute read

Six top tips for GMPe success

Let’s face it, pensions administration would be a lot simpler without GMP, or GMP equalisation (GMPe). But, as Brightwell’s GMPe project for BTPS draws to...

5 minute read