Aon Employer Covenant Consulting Services

Aon is a leading provider of covenant review services and has worked with over 300 clients and is a past winner of “Sponsor Covenant Provider of the Year” by UK Professional Pensions.

Our employer covenant team is staffed with finance, accounting, credit and actuarial specialists who between them have over 90 years of relevant experience. We also work closely with our actuarial and investment colleagues who provide us with support for and insight into those areas as required.

We provide the full range of covenant services and advice to trustees and sponsors of schemes whose sponsors vary in size between £1m and £4 billion and are active across all business sectors.

Covenant capabilities - what we can provide:

We provide the following services to trustee and corporate clients:

• Covenant assessments
• Covenant monitoring (KPI's & triggers)
• Affordability analysis
• Stress testing
• Integrated risk management reviews
• Corporate events and mitigation advice
• PPF guarantor certification analysis
• Covenant advice in relation to corporate events (including mergers & acquisition, restructuring and special dividends)

What differentiates us from other covenant providers?

We believe that Aon's dedicated covenant team is different from those of other firms in that:

• We focus more on trustee and corporate support and less on writing long reports
• We offer a quality and practical service at a reasonable price
• Our lead consultants stay involved at all stages of analysis and delivery
• We are used to working very closely with sponsors, actuaries and other advisors

Our approach to Covenant Assessment:

• Our approach to covenant assessment is closely aligned to that of the Pensions Regulator, which ensures that the Trustees can be confident that all of the relevant issues are covered.
• We believe that covenant strength is strongly influenced by industry dynamics and the position of the employers within that industry. Consequently, our approach to covenant assessment is to first understand the industry in which the employers operate before considering the specifics of the employers' business operations.
• Once we have a good understanding of the industry and business, we can better interpret the employers' financial information relative to the pension scheme.
• We take a proportionate approach to employer covenant analysis - providing the desired level of analysis as required by clients.
• We are acutely aware that our analysis is generally just one step in a more complex valuation process and, therefore, we always work closely with scheme actuaries and trustees or corporates to ensure an integrated approach to employer covenant analysis.
• We manage our client relationships carefully to avoid "surprises" and to ensure that trustees can easily incorporate our advice into their overall objectives/requirements.

If you would like to find out more or discuss further, please contact your usual Aon contact or contact:

 

Aon Solutions UK Limited - a company registered in England and Wales under registration number 4396810 with its registered office at The Aon Centre, The Leadenhall Building, 122 Leadenhall Street, London EC3V 4AN.