How to avoid sleepwalking into a de facto DB scheme buy-out

Overview

A key question companies should be asking themselves is the role that risk transfer solutions could take as part of their DB pension endgame strategy. Unfortunately, many companies have been avoiding this question due to the perception that it could lead to an investment and funding strategy involving higher company costs together with a risk of becoming “locked in” to a strategy that might not make sense in the future if circumstances change.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of trustees are looking at the merits of risk transfer and are looking to their scheme sponsors to articulate a clear view on the issue. The risk is that if companies continue to avoid the issue, they are in danger of sleepwalking into a risk transfer strategy leading to effectively a buy-out situation, implemented by the trustees while the company remains largely a bystander.

In our latest webinar, Leonard Bowman, Head of Corporate DB Endgame Strategy, was joined by Charles Cameron from Slaughter and May to set out how scheme sponsors can avoid sleepwalking into effectively a DB scheme buy-out.

In this webinar, we explored: 

• The difference between a whole scheme buy-in and an actual scheme buy-out

• How companies can engage with their trustees proactively

• Some real-life examples of the issues companies have to work through, financial and legal

• A review of actions companies should be taking now

Don’t worry if you couldn’t join live, sign up now and you'll be able to access the webinar on-demand, at a time convenient for you. If you have any questions, please get in touch.