Trustee Effectiveness
Trustees are more time pressured than ever: discover how to get back the time you need to complete all the actions
Better governed schemes not only minimise the risks that they face but they also maximise their chance of being able to capitalise on transient market opportunities. Our role is to help you to improve your scheme governance and trustee effectiveness and suggest solutions that help you deliver your long term goals. We have developed a number of new tools that we believe help trustees balance delivering routine and compliance items as well as tackling the actions to deliver their longer term strategy. - Susan Hoare, Partner, Aon
When asked what keeps them awake at night, pensions trustees regularly cite issues such as lack of time, resources, knowledge and information.
In other words, they worry about their collective ability to make informed and timely decisions and implement them effectively.
At Aon, our definition of good governance focuses on exactly this — that is, having the right structure, the right processes and the right people involved in running the pension scheme; with the right skills to not only mitigate the risks the scheme faces but to capitalise on any transient market opportunities, as well as to be prepared for the unexpected.
Working alongside behavioural insight agency Behave London and our colleagues in Aon's Reward practice, we have developed a comprehensive suite of tools to firstly enhance your understanding of your current operational effectiveness and governance, and then take tangible steps towards improvement, including improving trustee meetings and decision-making. Our suite of Trustee Effectiveness tools addresses the Pensions Regulator’s latest thinking on 21st Century Trusteeship and Governance and help with areas such as:
- Reviewing current trustee effectiveness
- Understanding the balance of personalities
- Understanding trustees' personal attributes, skills and experience
- Improving trustee group decision making
- Organising trustee meeting agendas and maximising the time between meetings
- Challenging advisers
But good governance doesn’t stop there. It’s also important to consider the threats which may impact the day-to-day operations and decision making, such as personnel changes, supplier interruption, corporate transactions and cyber-attacks. Drawing on Aon’s deep expertise, we are able to provide guidance to help your boards develop and test contingency plans.
Get The Trustee Toolkit
Aon Trustee Effectiveness Podcast Series
Building the right support for your pension scheme
In this podcast Aon experts Susan Hoare and Sarah Butlin discuss the steps trustees can make in identifying incremental changes that could improve the effectiveness of a trustee board. Once a trustee board is running well and making lots of effective decisions, the speed at which the trustees can operate is dependent on the level and quality of resources they have around them to implement their decisions.
The Pensions Regulator welcomes the development of tools like this, which provide ways for trustees to assess their current levels of governance and set targets for improvement. As part of our work on 21st Century Trusteeship we would like to encourage trustees to regularly assess their board effectiveness and we welcome initiatives developed by industry to support TPR’s drive to improve governance. - Lesley Titcomb, Chief Executive at The Pensions Regulator
Our Trustee Effectiveness tools can help create better trustee meetings and stronger long-term outcomes. By having the foresight to bake in long-term planning, and to take account of trustees’ own cognitive biases when making decisions, trustees are much more likely to make a strong contribution to a well-run scheme.
The Trustee Effectiveness toolkit contains everything you need to give your board a boost from our latest research:
- Behavioural Checklist for Chairing Meetings
- Trustee Meeting Framework
- Between Meetings Organiser
- Ten Questions to Help Trustees to Challenge their Advisers
As well as:
- Governance Viewpoints
- The Governance Challenge
Get The Trustee Toolkit
Listen to our podcast on pensions governance and achieving trustee effectiveness:
To learn more, or to speak to one of our experts, email talktous@aon.com
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.