Commenting on Hymans Robertson’s response to TPR’s Future of Governance and Trusteeship Consultation, Laura Andrikopoulos, Governance Consulting lead at Hymans Robertson says:

“While the 21^st Century Trusteeship campaign made great improvements, we believe it did not sufficiently differentiate between trustees serving on boards overseeing different types of scheme, such as DC, DB or Hybrid.  Each scheme has specific needs and this needs to be appreciated.  We would also like to see greater consistency with the professional trustee accreditation regime.  Lay trustees should be encouraged to voluntarily follow the guidance of the professional trustee regime where clearly relevant to their role.

“A greater emphasis on collective effectiveness as a board is needed and this should be assessed annually. Governance excellence requires more than just trustees and the role of all players, such as scheme secretaries and governance advisers plus quality administrators and consultants, also needs to be appreciated.  Annual reviews of board composition alongside the annual effectiveness review which test the question of whether a professional trustee is required as well as considering diversity will support the aspiration of improved governance across the industry.

“We also believe that adopting an ‘hours counting’ approach to CPD for trustees may not be the way forward. Many professional organisations are moving away from an 'hours-counting' culture to one in which individuals take more responsibility for what constitutes enough. This ethos of self-responsibility should be embraced for trusteeship too.

“Overall we believe trustees fulfil very important non-executive director roles and we’d like to see a broader cultural shift which recognises this. Such a shift will make trustee roles more attractive and promote adequate training and skills development as standard practice.”