Why the end of consulting on The Teachers’ Pension scheme is just the beginning

Why the end of consulting on The Teachers’ Pension scheme is just the beginning. Picture the scene. You’ve taken your teachers through the consultation on the future of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) at your independent school and have put in place a defined contribution pension to take its place.

The school now has control over its future costs and teachers have some understanding of their new pension and benefits. Job done?

Not quite. In fact, nowhere near.

Implementing a new scheme means you now have another considerable responsibility – to make sure it operates effectively for every employee.

There’s also more asked of your staff who, to make the most of this new arrangement, need to be pro-active to make the most of working and investing and be sure to appreciate what decisions will be asked of them when it comes to taking their pension in future.

While your school will only undertake this exercise only once, if at all, our independent school consulting team has guided dozens of institutions through this process. We find posing these key questions helps all involved.

• Are you regularly reviewing the new pension scheme to make sure the selected provider continues to perform as advised?
• Do you have a mechanism in place to make sure you comply with your automatic enrolment duties under the new scheme?
• Are you measuring the engagement of your pension scheme members to make sure they make the most of their pensions?
• Who will help your employees with any questions about the new scheme?
• How will employees know and understand which retirement options will be the best for them?

Decades of advising employers and their people on DC pensions has equipped us with the deep knowledge to continue to develop services, strategies and features which can add value for school management teams taking this critical step.

So if you’ve answered “no” to any of the above questions, our team can help with the answers your school, staff and you are really going  to need.

Suffice to say, there are other questions to be posed, too, but we can lay out the full picture of the actual end of your consultation when you’re at the beginning with your DC scheme.