Spotlight on delivery in defence: Delivering the largest corporate pension scheme merger in UK pensions history
“Project One is a trusted business partner leveraging high quality and very experienced people who are prepared to roll their sleeves up and be completely hands on, as well as providing strategic and sound business management advice.” Chief Operating Officer
The Challenge Once the schemes had been formally merged, the next phase was to rationalise the combined investment assets to align them with the investment strategy for the merged scheme, in addition, the dismantling of the legacy unitisation structure, which was no longer required and would add unnecessary cost and complexity to the management of the investment assets, was also required. The benefits available through the merger were substantial and included financial savings on external advisors, asset management charges and scheme administration costs, as well as the lower costs associated with fewer trustees, trustee boards and committee meetings.
Our Approach The programme logically divided into around 10 separate workstreams, each focussed on the changes necessary in that specific business area to deliver the merger and operate the single consolidated scheme. At the outset, Project One brought the leaders of these business areas together to agree the outcomes the programme was seeking to achieve. An integrated programme team (IPT) was built from across these business areas, and a governance model was implemented which included a monthly Steering Board, a weekly meeting of the IPT and then typically weekly workstream meetings. The programme was fortunate to have a strong sponsor who was very engaged and supportive, willing to step in wherever senior direction or coaching across the business was required. Project One employed several important techniques to ensure the success of the programme: Strong visual representations of the roadmap of the programme were shared with the team and used as part of stakeholder management comms to ensure consistency of understanding, approach, objectives and target outcomes Careful identification of dependencies between workstreams allowed these to be managed with rigour and maintain the alignment of the operationally independent business areas Recognition that the programme team was made up of senior people, all of whom had a 'day job', and therefore working with them in such a way that a regular evaluation of priorities ensured that impacts of BAU on programme and programme on BAU could be accommodated and planned for wherever possible Formal and thorough reporting and stakeholder management ensured levels of confidence were maintained despite some complex and challenging situations.
On the advice of the Pensions Regulator, our customer initiated a programme to merge four of their pension schemes, the largest ever pension scheme merger in the UK with £25bn of assets under management. The defined benefit schemes each had different benefits bases, different levels of maturity and different funding levels. To achieve the merger required, the agreement of the Board of Trustees of each of the merging schemes, the constitution of a new Board, and formal consultation with the 185,000 scheme members, for whom preservation of their pension benefits was paramount; carefully planned and coordinated stakeholder management was therefore crucial. Operationally, the merger required complex preparatory activity across many separate business functions, including: actuarial alignment of scheme liabilities; transfer of legal ownership of the myriad assets of the merging schemes into the single remaining scheme; negotiation with the independent advisors of the merging schemes to demonstrate that the interests of members were being protected; alignment and coordination across the administration of the four schemes, such as receipt of contributions, payment of benefits and handling of member queries; alignment of statutory and regulatory reporting.
The Value Add and Outcomes The first phase of this bold, innovative and complex programme was delivered on time. Despite the disruption of the COVID crisis, the programme team pushed through to Phase 2 and the restructuring of the assets. The benefits for the Trustees and scheme members were: Over £10m of savings over five years returned directly to the scheme for the benefit of the scheme members (return on investment of 46% IRR) Trustee numbers and committees both reduced by more than 50% Over £1m p.a. saved through the more efficient scheme and fund management Tax savings in excess of £1m achieved through simplifying the scheme investment structure.
SUCCESSFUL DELIVERY OF THIS PROJECT LED DIRECTLY TO THE SCHEME BEING AWARDED “Defined Benefit PENSION SCHEME OF THE YEAR” AT THE ANNUAL PENSION SCHEME AWARDS, 2021
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real change • real difference
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