The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (UK) Staff Benefits Scheme has agreed a £420m (€489m) full scheme buy-in with Legal & General Assurance Society Ltd.
The transaction covers all of the scheme’s defined benefit (DB) members – approximately 440 non-retired members and 740 retirees, it was announced.
Legal & General said the transaction represented “a significant step” on the fund’s planned de-risking journey.
The fund has been a client of Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) for the last 12 years, which has enabled the scheme to efficiently lock pricing to its LGIM assets ahead of the transaction.
The scheme’s sole trustee is Capital Cranfield Pension Trustees Limited, and LCP acted as specialist de-risking adviser, while CMS provided legal advice. Mercer acted as administrator and scheme actuary.
Legal & General received legal advice from Slaughter and May.
Peter Thompson from Capital Cranfield said: “We are very pleased to have insured the pension benefits for all members of the defined benefit section of the scheme, achieving our goal of providing members with long-term certainty.”
Partnership between Redington and Quietroom to drive member engagement
Redington and Quietroom have announced a new strategic partnership, which will look to create an integrated proposition for defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) pension schemes, allowing trustees to access support from two specialist organisations via a single relationship.
The move reaffirms Redington’s continued commitment to expanding the services it is able to offer clients, whilst ensuring all advice “remains truly specialist, independent and of the highest calibre”, I said.
Jonathan Parker, head of DC and financial wellbeing at Redington, said: “The past 18 months have shone a real spotlight on the importance of how schemes communicate with members. We wanted to create a first-class communications service to complement our existing DC and DB consulting capabilities.
He said that Quietroom “is the perfect partner” to help Redington drive a much-needed shift in how people engage with their pension savings.
Mark Scantlebury, co-founder of Quietroom, said the firm has “worked behind the scenes” with Redington for over a decade, adding that the two firms have 20 clients in common.
“It’s our ambition not just to bring our teams closer together, but also to use this partnership to develop shared propositions that neither of us could offer on our own. As the challenges facing schemes evolve, we need to think differently,” he added.
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