A recent pension seminar held by the Society of Actuaries in Ireland has heard that pension fund inefficiencies cost schemes millions of pounds each year.
Speaking at the seminar entitled ‘Keeping Your Pension Safe’, Tom Geraghty of Mercers said that trustees must become more demanding and questioning of all their professional advisors whether they be investment managers, consultants or administrators.
‘It is simply too simplistic to rely solely on professional trustees as a safeguard. Other trustees must be trained in their duties in order that overall standards are raised, Geraghty said.
A second speaker at the conference, pensions lawyer Philip Smith, said that rather than simplifying the pensions puzzle, the recently introduced PRSA proposals would in their current form add an other layer of complexity and confusion to pensions.
‘The most worrying gap is that unlike pension schemes, no one is responsible to the members in the long-term. Employers having set up a standard PRSA are not responsible for monitoring the investment performance. And there are no trustees.’ |
