Trustee Board
Governance

The use of committees and working groups can drive projects and oversee complex areas such as investments.  They can help make best use of time and ensure the main Trustee Board meetings focus on strategy. However, it is also important to evaluate how the Trustee Board, committees and working groups interact to ensure the structure is as effective as possible.

Part of our trustee board governance is reviewing committee membership, the quality and flow of information and the effective use of delegation and decision making powers. Our evaluation reports are always practical with clear action plans to support the development of the governance framework.

Our bespoke assessment service is based upon the specific objective of the assessment. We combine questionnaires, individual interviews with Trustee Directors, advisers and company representatives. We can also include the in-house team to provide an overall independent assessment of your Trustee Board’s composition and skills to help promote a strong team-based approach.

Our review includes observed meetings to help understand group dynamics and culture as well as the role of the Chair. We often facilitate a workshop-based approach to agree priorities, identify areas for development and put in place an agreed timetable for implementation.

We strongly believe in the value that can be added from the presence of Employer and Member Nominated Trustees ( ENTs & MNTs). We also understand that it can be difficult to find people to fill these roles.

We work with Employers and Trustee Boards to help them in developing a robust ENT and MNT process including providing independent candidate selection support, running general trustee awareness days and reviewing the communication process with both the employer and the membership to promote the role as effectively as possible. This can help supplement existing skills, add diversity of thought and drive better outcomes for members.

A requirement of the new General Code is to be able to demonstrate an Effective System of Governance ( ESoG). We have developed a bespoke, cost effective Gap Analysis, useful even for the smallest of schemes to help set a foundation for compliance.

Our experienced governance team can help trustees to assess their current policies and procedures and how they can help meet the ESoG requirements. Identifying key risks is an essential part of the process. Making best use of existing documents such as the scheme risk register is important but introducing tools such as root cause analysis and Early Warning Indicators (EWIs) can help make risk management systems forward looking.

Our team includes risk management professionals who bring a practical and proportionate approach to delivering best practice in this area.

For scheme trustees, the Pensions Regulator (TPR) has made it clear that it believes that more diverse and inclusive teams drive better results, and that diverse boards make better decisions.

The most recent guidance not only focuses on the role of the Chair in creating diverse and inclusive Board. It also looks at how even an apparently homogenous membership has diverse backgrounds and neurodiversity challenges in member communication. 

Our professional governance team work with Trustee Boards to help identify how establishing and delivering EDI principles across Trustee selection, adviser reviews, investment decisions and member communication can promote inclusiveness across all elements of a pension scheme and its governance framework.