Pensions - Articles - Hymans Robertson comments on the updated principles on DC

 “We welcome the further guidance from the Regulator on what a good DC scheme should look like and their intention to raise the bar ahead of auto-enrolment. The creation of an effective governance structure for a DC is clearly vital in order to ensure successful outcomes for members in the future. However, one omission is that there is no mention in the principles about the need to set clear objectives for the scheme as a whole in order to determine what success looks like. At a series of seminars that we ran earlier this year only a handful of schemes said they had clear objectives against which to measure the success of their DC scheme. This begs the question, how can trustees and sponsors know if their members are likely to achieve a “good” outcome at retirement if they don’t determine and document what “good” means? We believe that setting clear objectives in all the key areas (including governance, administration, communications and retirement options) is a vital starting point for the successful running of a DC scheme.”