DB Member Choice – At retirement
The pensions landcape has changed significantly in recent years. Members now have much more choice around how they access their benefits, however they need support to help make these complex and life changing decisions.
We can help you implement a member options strategy which is a win:win for you and your members. We’ll ensure you provide members with valuable choice and that this choice is communicated really well.
Helping members make the right choices
Since the introduction of Freedom and Choice, members have become much more engaged in their retirement choices. It’s important these choices are informed and exercised in the right way in order to prevent members making wrong, irreversible decisions with life-long impact.
We can help you support your members on their journey to, and through retirement by:
- Helping you understand the full range of member options available, and importantly which ones could benefit your members
- Developing an engagement strategy to engage your members with their options over the long term. We use engagement specialists from our sister company like minds to do this.
Facilitating access to financial advice to ensure your members receive quality support to help make the right decision
Contact Ryan to find out more.
Why act now
There are three pressing reasons why trustees and sponsors need to act now:
- Member engagement is at an all time high – a staggering c£80bn of DB transfers have been paid out since the freedoms were introduced, with c£30bn of this paid out in the last year alone. Members need the right support to help make good choice – retirement incomes should not be left to chance
- High profile scandals and scams – we must learn from mis-selling scandals such as the British Steel Pension Scheme, where members were picked off by unscrupulous advisers. This risks of doing nothing and leaving members to fend for themselves is too great.
- Win win – Providing members with good choice in a supported environment will naturally help the scheme de-risk and accelerate the journey to achieving the long term target (whatever that might be) .
Member engagement is key to any successful member options exercise. We use engagement specialists from our sister company like minds to build trust with members and ensure long term engagement is maximised.
We can help you develop a strategy to the benefit of all parties. A clear long term engagement plan will deliver a seamless, future-proofed experience for members, while driving efficiencies for trustees and sponsors over time.
One of my schemes ran a PIE advised by Hymans Robertson earlier this year, which had a 50% take-up, resulting in more engaged pensioners and leaving us able to consider settling our liabilities with a pensioner buy-in.
Steve Southern - Professional Independent Trustee
With the changing pensions landscape, communicating effectively, and regularly, with members has never been more important as it is now. We can help you plan and deliver the best approach for achieving your engagement objectives.
In this webinar recording we, along with Carolyn Saunders (Pinsent Masons) and Sue Cox (like minds), explored how you can help support your members in making good retirement choices.
Freedom & Choice in action
Due to the additional choice and complexity introduced by the Pension Freedoms, Essar Oil (UK) Pension Scheme (a client of Hymans Robertson for a number of years) wanted to support their employees and help them make better retirement decisions. They wanted give them access to relevant and timely information which could help them make the most appropriate decision for their circumstances.
After considering a range of options, Essar Oil chose LV= Pension Compass. It is a dedicated and secure online platform full of useful information and personalised tools that support with the engagement and education of members in relation to their retirement choices. As well as benefiting members, this solution benefits Trustees and Sponsors by helping their members make better retirement decisions as well as reducing risk.
18 months on from the Pension Freedoms it is great to see the development of solutions such as this for supporting DB members to take better retirement decisions.
David Lowe - HR Operations Manager, Essar Oil UK