Industry experts have called for more collaboration between pension schemes amid growing regulatory complexity.

The topic was raised during a panel session at the PLSA Investment Conference 2022 today, 26 May, by Citi UK Pension Plans chair, Colin Stewart, who said there should be “a lot more collaboration between schemes”.

“I think, certainly, the big schemes have a lot of resources and some of that could be shared with smaller schemes in a very interesting way without impacting any confidentiality,” he explained.

The comments followed research presented by Janus Henderson Investors head of UK institutional, Anil Shenoy, who detailed the results of a recent report published by the firm.

The report found that 79 per cent of trustees say their top challenge is dealing with the growing complexity of pensions.

Commenting on the result, Shenoy said: “Probably unsurprisingly for this audience, pension complexity dominates the pensions agenda right now, with environmental, social and governance (ESG), particularly Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) being a key contributor.

“Unfortunately, trustee satisfaction, with their workloads and their resources, has fallen by about half since the last time this survey was conducted in 2019.”

In response to this, it was agreed that as well as more engagement from the regulator, collaboration could also help. PTL professional pension trustee, Anne Sander, said: “If the small schemes can collaborate with the larger schemes they can learn something.”

Reach Pension Plan trustee director, Paul Rhodes, also agreed: “I think there could be more beneficial collaboration between schemes.”

Asked by the panel chair, Mallowstreet co-founder and board director, Dawid Konotey-Ahulu, if they are seeing examples of schemes working together, Sander said: “I’m seeing it between schemes with the same sponsor and they are sharing practices and everything and doing it once. I’m not seeing so much of it on the small scheme side.”

Stewart added: “In [the] financial services [sector], the bigger schemes are well known to each other so there is a lot of discussions that go on between the larger schemes on some of the things we are working on, some of the ideas and that has been hugely helpful, particularly in the DC space.

"When you are looking at creating new default funds, for example, it’s always useful to see what your peer group are doing, what their experiences are of advisers, or particular asset managers, or member reaction. It happens in a very informal way.”

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