Adviser review and benchmarking
Are you confident your pension scheme advisers are delivering effective high quality services and good value for money? Are you meeting the requirements of the general code and planning on undertaking periodic reviews of your advisers?
Striking the right balance between achieving good pension governance and containing pension scheme costs by ensuring advisers are delivering value for money is just one of the many demands faced by pension trustees and pension managers.
Our independence means we are free from conflicts and are able to consider the whole market; using our knowledge and experience to balance adviser value and cost. Our ‘day job’ as professional pension trustees and scheme secretary expertise means:
1
we know what really makes a difference
2
we know what high quality looks like in practice
3
we know what good value for money really means
Meet our adviser review specialists
We can guide you through the selection process, providing assessment methods and score sheets and managing presentation days and handle as much (or as little) of the implementation process as you’d like us to where a new provider is selected.
With the introduction of The Pension Regulator’s general code of practice, the expected criteria for selecting and appointing advisers has been set out, reiterating that regular adviser reviews are performed. This is where our team of specialists can help. Check out our service flyer for further information.
Adviser benchmarking
Compare your pension service and fees against market standards quickly and cost-effectively. Our independent fixed-fee benchmarking reviews provide clear, objective information to help you decide if you're getting value for money. Use the results to stay with your current adviser, improve their service or conduct a full market review.
The benefits of our unique approach
We run tenders for advisers on behalf of pension trustee boards, whether or not we’re appointed as professional trustee or scheme secretary. We ask the right questions to probe pension providers and share data from our unique database of pension adviser firms, practical understanding of how advisers work with trustees and sponsors, and insights from our experience as independent trustees and secretaries. Our streamlined process combines objective data, practical knowledge, and extensive experience.
Full market adviser review
Our effective full adviser review service avoids the time-consuming hassle of tenders. From start to finish, we manage a review that is designed to match your needs with the right advisers and confident client-adviser relationships, free from conflicts of interest, completely flexible and value for money.
Case Study
Market review brings good news
A national provider who saw their auditor fees raised asked us to help them with a market review. We were delighted to help…
The background
- Our existing client – a national provider in the utilities sector with a large DB scheme – invited us to support them with a benchmarking exercise against their newly increased auditor fees.
- Having been the scheme auditor for many years, the incumbent adviser had recently increased their fees, so our client believed it was an appropriate time to review the market.
How we helped
- Using our knowledge, experience and excellent relationships in the adviser market, we were able to combine our insights and access to a wealth of data to provide a range of reasonable comparisons.
- We benchmarked the fees and services proposed against our other clients with similar size schemes and circumstances.
- Our findings revealed that the incumbent’s fees were uncompetitive. As a result, our client decided to commission a tender exercise.
The outcome
- We supported the client in going out to market and used our standard collateral to obtain fees quotes and tender responses from a selected number of firms.
- The tender generated new quotes that were significantly cheaper than what the incumbent had originally quoted, giving our client savings of 60% on their current annual audit fee!
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