Jardine Reeves Brown consultants and actuaries has published its fourth annual ‘Survey into Pension Plan Compliance and Standards’ in the UK. Completed questionnaires were returned from 173 plans, equal to 14.5% of UK schemes.
Some 16% of the respondents thought that the new Minimum Funding Requirement (MFR) had an adverse impact on the financial sponsorship of their plan. According to 95% of the replies, the fund trustees had reviewed the issue of socially responsible investment and when members had a choice of funds, 27% of plans had made an ‘ethical’ fund available.
Only 60% of the plans in the survey have reviewed and amended the plan operating procedures to fully comply with the new Data Protection Act, while 78% of the responding funds stated that the trustees have registered as data controllers.
Just over half of the plans (55%) had developed a formal strategy for managing the risks associated with the operation of their pension plan, while only 11% of them stated that their advisers are consistently meeting agreed service standards.
Nearly three quarters (71%) of the replies stated that the plan had considered alternative forms of pension provision in the last 12 months, which is a significant rise compared to 24% last year. Around 30% of those who had considered change had actually done so. The most popular change has been to move from final salary to DC.

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