Pensions & benefits

Professional trustee selection

Our specialist team plays an important role in helping pension schemes appoint the right individuals to support them in achieving their objectives.

What sets us apart? Our strong relationships with professional trustee (PT) firms. They trust our process to be open, fair and collaborative. We provide schemes with the tools and knowledge to make the right decision for them.

Sole mates

Our fourth annual survey focussing on growth and changing trends in the Professional Trustee and Professional Corporate Sole Trustee market over the year.

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Findings from our 2023 sole mates report and predictions for 2024

In this video, Holly McArthur shares her most interesting findings from the 2023 Professional Trustee survey and shares her perspective on the current professional trustee landscape.

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Chart your own course

Taking control of your journey

Our sixth annual report is built around the results of our annual survey of the DB pension scheme market and provides insights across a whole range of areas of DB strategy and endgame planning.

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The General Code of Practice: The time is now

In our webinar we look deeper into the final Code and highlight the areas that have changed since the initial draft. We also host a Q&A discussion with David Fairs, LCP Partner and former Executive Director of Regulatory Policy, Analysis and Advice at The Pensions Regulator.

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The Professional Trustee market is growing rapidly

The Professional Trustee (“PT”) and Professional Corporate Sole Trustee (“PCST”) markets have seen huge activity over recent years, and continue to grow rapidly:

Over half of all DB and DC pension schemes in the UK with assets over £5m now have a Professional Trustee, an increase of more than 10% in just three years.

Sole Trusteeship is growing even more rapidly and the industry has doubled in the last three years. As the demands on schemes and trustees are ever increasing, these figures are only expected to grow.

Our expert team has significant experience in this area, and is ready to help you select and appoint the best Professional Trustee or Sole Trustee for your scheme.

We can help you to find the right Professional Trustee for your scheme.

LCP offers a market-leading PT selection service. The team have completed more than 25 exercises in the last three years, six of which were for schemes over £1bn. The team have strong relationships with all of the main PT firms in the market, with a deep understanding of the firms, their propositions, and the individuals within them. The PT firms trust LCP’s process to be open, fair, and collaborative and this means that we get fantastic engagement with all of our exercises.

We marry our market expertise and knowledge with excellent project management. Our approach ensures that exercises run to time and budget. Our team has the resource to pick up projects quickly, and experience of delivering on extremely tight deadlines.

We prioritise the needs of our client – the scheme – and approach every project in a flexible way. We ensure that we provide schemes and sponsors with the tools and knowledge they need to make the right decision.

Through our in-depth knowledge of the professional trustee market, we are best placed to advise you on:

The right governance structure for the scheme
Suitable professional trustee to support the scheme in its journey to endgame
Sensible budgets for the appointment of an independent trustee

We provide end-to-end project management with unique insights in the market, the firms and the individuals, supporting selections from start to appointment.

Through our strong links with TPR we have a good understanding of what governance process is required for those appointments and ensure we provide clients with a thorough audit report documenting the selection process.

Once the new trustee is in place, we are always keen to hear feedback on how the trustee is working with the scheme.

LCP provided an excellent service in overseeing the selection of a new professional trustee for our Scheme. They really took the time to understand our priorities and ways of working which enabled us to find the ideal candidate. LCP’s deep knowledge of the industry was clear throughout the process and the quality and clarity of their advice was excellent. We are confident that this appointment will help the Scheme to meet its challenges and achieve its objectives in the years to come.

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What are the benefits of appointing a Professional Trustee?

Appointing a PT can benefit everyone. That's sponsors, trustees, and members.

: A PT can free up employees’ time, reducing the burden on employer-nominated trustees and giving them more time to do their day-job. PTs will also improve the communication between the sponsor and trustees, helping to alleviate conflicts of interest and providing an independent view on a number of matters. A PT’s job is also to help fill any knowledge gaps on the Board, aiding projects to run smoothly and efficiently, and steering strategic decisions.

Whilst there is a cost to a PT, this is generally offset by other savings made: A PT’s expertise can streamline decisions made due to past experience and specialism. The appointed PT can also use their wider market knowledge to benchmark adviser fees and judge value for money to get the best out of their advisers.

: PTs will generally have portfolios of clients, meaning that they can use the knowledge and experience gained with one scheme to benefit their wider client base. Lay trustees will find their PT invaluable when others on the board are compromised or conflicted, for example during a corporate transaction that could impact an employer’s covenant. PTs can also help to mediate disagreements between the board, as a perceived neutral party with the skills to manage complex discussions. A PT can educate lay trustees and ensure all trustees are able to contribute to discussions and make informed decisions.

: It can be a big source of comfort to know that there is an expert on the board. A PT will be able to work closely with the administrator to ensure the scheme is run well, meaning fewer complaints and happier members.

: The number of schemes using a Professional Corporate Sole Trustee (PCST) doubled between 2021 and 2024 – and these are no longer just the small schemes. It’s becoming more and more common to see PCSTs appointed to multi-billion pound schemes.

There are lots of reasons why a PCST could be beneficial, but the most common include sponsors struggling to find member or employer nominated trustees, conflicts between underlying schemes, or complex projects that need to be implemented quickly. A PCST may also be a good solution where the sponsor has limited time or understanding of the UK pensions regime, a complicated legislative issue affecting the scheme, or simply because the sponsor needs to run the scheme more cost-effectively and benefit from the reduced adviser fees that often go hand-in-hand with a PCST.