I am pleased that LCP has produced a report about Pension Trustees, both those of DC and DB funds.  Here is their executive summary

Executive Summary

There is growing interest within government in using pension assets to promote the growth of the UK economy. Although the new government has initially focused on consolidation of Defined Contribution pension schemes, the bulk of private sector
workplace assets are sitting in Defined Benefit schemes – more than £1.2 trillion on latest estimates.

However, in all the discussion of reform in this space, remarkably little attention is given to the people who oversee this huge sum – pension scheme trustees.

This needs to change.

This report seeks to give policymakers and all with an interest in the DB pensions world a deeper understanding of these ‘pensions powerbrokers’ – the key people who decide what happens to vast amounts of DB pension wealth, built up over a
period of decades.

We begin by summarising what we know about where DB pension scheme assets are held. Out of £1.2 trillion in assets held across more than 4,800 schemes, we calculate that half of all assets sit in just 50 schemes. The trustees of those schemes, who decide how that money is invested, number fewer than 500 people.

Yet the trustees we spoke to in conducting this research gave a consistent message that senior policymakers simply do not engage enough with them before formulating policy.

Unless policy makers understand who these people are, and what makes them tick, they may find that proposed reforms do not work in the way intended.

To better understand how trustees see their role, including their reaction to ideas around allowing ‘surplus’ DB funds to be extracted from schemes, we have undertaken interviews with:
• Professional trustees who work for professional trustee firms; such trustees often sit on multiple pension scheme boards.
• Independent professional trustees, who bring their individual expertise and experience but are not attached to a trustee firm.
• Member-nominated trustees – lay people elected from within the membership of the scheme.

Here is the report which you can read and download from this link

The report was forwarded to me by a Chair of Trustees who has strong views on the importance of trustees. It came with this introduction from a Trustee for longer than most of us have worked.

Far too often it appears that consultants tend to view their role as the decision maker not as an advisor.  This also has important implications for professional trustees.

The legal loophole that allows there to be a sole trustee if that trustee is appropriately professional qualified did not envisage multi beneficiary pension scheme trusts.

Secondly the professionalism required is more than that required of being an advisor, it is to bring experience, skills, and knowledge beyond that of the advisor, and preferably from outside the pensions “bubble”, so that the correct questions are to put to the advisors and the response appropriately challenged. That is part of the Trustee’s fiduciary duty.

As LCP note the independent Trustees’ voice is too often over-looked when setting policy, but I think is becoming increasingly strident through groupings like the AMNT, the Trustee Sustainability Working Party (chaired by Bobby Riddaway) and alongside employers with smaller schemes in the SME DB Pensions Consultation Group (chaired by Charles Malcolm-Brown).

I will continue to publish more from such people and from the correspondent that readers of this blog will know as Pension Oldie.