Pensions Strategy

What EY can do for you

Our Pensions Strategy team brings together Restructuring and Turnaround Strategy colleagues and EY-Parthenon professionals to help clients assess and monitor covenant and transform their pension strategies using extensive industry insights.

Pension Strategy

Whether it’s a valuation year for the scheme or not, we can help corporate clients and trustees with the following:

• Covenant assessment and monitoring
• The affordability of the pension scheme
• Which entities are legally bound to financially support the pension scheme
• The long-term sustainability and future prospects of the corporate sponsor, taking into consideration industry and sector
• The potential recoveries due to the scheme on insolvency
• An appropriate long-term objective for the scheme and a strategy to achieve it
• How to manage pension risk and meet funding obligations, given a scheme’s specific situation when approaching Integrated Risk Management (IRM)
• Innovative non-cash contribution options
• Risks to the scheme’s journey plan through scenario and contingency planning
• Environmental Social and Government (ESG) considerations for the covenant
• Assessment of the sponsor’s vulnerability to takeover and resilience to market disruption

Impact of event-driven activity

We can help clients through both distressed and non-distressed transactions that involve Defined Benefit (DB) pension schemes. Whether it is moving assets around a group or selling a business unit, we can advise on the impact this activity has on the scheme and its members. As part of our advice we will consider the options available to stakeholders and provide negotiation and implementation support. We can also provide a view on how such activity may be viewed by The Pensions Regulator.

Technical pensions advice

Assistance with innovative solutions in respect of:

• Scheme mergers
• Changing of scheme sponsors
• Pension Protection Fund (PPF) certifications and levies

We can also provide trustee training and/or workshops, expert witness statements and sector insight webinars and/or roundtables. If required, we can also support ongoing, business-as-usual advisors, with specialist advice in specific situations.