Pension conflicts of interest – with Darren Masters, professional trustee at Capital Cranfield

Описание: Darren Masters, professional trustee at Capital Cranfield Trustees, joins us for this episode of The Professional Investment Podcast. His news story of the week is Professional Pension’s story that in-house advisers raise conflict of interest concerns.

We discuss the different ways conflicts of interest can arise in a defined benefit scheme such as trustees as employees and possibly also in senior company roles as well as advisers working for both the sponsors and the scheme.

Many professional trustees often come from investment consultancy backgrounds so could favour third-party providers they used to use at those firms. This can become muddled with cognitive bias.

Last year The Pensions Regulator published a framework looking at how the professional trustee works with the aim of increasing its influence over this growing market and its increasing influence on legacy defined benefit schemes.

Our conversation turned to taking a closer look at the different options available for large, medium and small schemes when it comes to building pension portfolios and the endgame options.

We discussed the importance of governance in ensuring the best member outcomes and how difficult it can be for trustees to consider the smorgasbord of different endgame options.

But the heterogeneity of the UK’s 5,000 or so DB schemes mean coming up with simple options are not an option. We finished our discussion by touching on just a few ways pensions schemes can have entirely different characteristics to one another.

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ABOUT THE GUEST:

Darren Masters is a Professional Trustee at Capital Cranfield Pension Trustees Limited. Prior to joining Capital Cranfield he was a Partner at Mercer and headed up their covenant consulting business, having been involved in the employer covenant industry since its establishment in 2004. He is a chartered accountant and former restructuring and insolvency practitioner.

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ABOUT THE HOST:


Charlotte Moore is an award-winning journalist and co-founder of Moore Squared Communications. She has spent almost two decades writing about how the UK’s largest investment organisations allocate their capital for a number of different specialist magazines including Professional Pensions, IPE and MandateWire. She started this podcast to increase understanding of how and why the UK’s £3 trillion pensions industry invests its members’ capital to provide the best possible retirement.


🔗 https://mooresquaredcommunications.co...

Chapters:

00:00 – Introduction & Guest Welcome
00:00:38 – Story of the Week: Pension Conflict of Interest Concerns
00:01:48 – Member Interests, Tied Advice & Endgame Risks
00:02:40 – Types of Conflicts Trustees Face
00:04:42 – Unconscious Bias & Advisor Selection
00:05:53 – Trustee Influence on Investment Decisions
00:06:02 – The Pensions Regulator & “Good Trusteeship” Standards
00:08:34 – The Rise of Sole Trusteeships
00:11:44 – Endgame Planning: Buyout, Run-On & Superfunds
00:26:44 – Surplus, Fairness & Final Reflections

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