Conference programme

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Last updated: 7th April

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Professional Pensions Risk Reduction Forum
Thursday 15th April 2010 at Hilton London Tower Bridge

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9.00 Registration and refreshments

9:25 - 9:30 Chairman’s welcome

Assessing the marketplace – an overview of risk-reduction marketplace and how it has developed over the past year.

Jonathan Stapleton, Editor, Professional Pensions

9:30 – 10:00 Assessing the case for risk reduction

• Why trustees and their corporate sponsors need to reduce the risk in their pension schemes
• Outlining and assessing how to choose the right risk reduction option for your scheme
  James Mullins, Senior Liability Management Specialist, Hymans Robertson

10:00 – 10:20 Improving the cost and effectiveness of risk reduction strategies

Changing the design of your pension scheme can help reduce financial risk for the sponsoring employer. This session will assess options including scheme closure, freezing a scheme to existing members, changing employee contribution levels and reducing benefit levels. It will also look at exchanging pension increases for an increased pension today and other methods of reducing the risk through scheme design. In particular it will look at:

• How to implement scheme design changes
• How to explain design changes to members
  David Jarman, Actuary, Bluefin

10:20 – 10:35 Group Q&A

10:35 - 11:05 Coffee break

11:05 - 11:25 Enhanced transfer value exercise (ETVs)*

This session will explain what enhanced transfer value exercises are and how they can help scheme reduce the future risk of their scheme. It will also look at:

• How to put an ETV exercise into place
• How to provide financial advice to scheme members and why this is essential to a successful ETV process David Bush, Principal, Hewitt

11:25 – 11:45 Liability-driven investment

Liability-driven investment (LDI) can potentially narrow the range of future investment outcomes and reduce risk for schemes and their sponsoring companies. This session will look at how LDI makes assets and liabilities follow each other over time – and also reduces investment volatility. It also looks at:

• How to put an LDI strategy into place
• Understanding the downside of LDI and how reducing volatility and risk also reduces returns for schemes
• The best way to match scheme cash-flows
• Insuring against other risks such as inflation and interest rate risks
  Owen McCrossan, Investment Director Standard Life Investments

11:45 - 12:05 Longevity swaps

This session will look at how longevity insurance can allow schemes to insure only the longevity risk of pensioners. It will explain how this can help cap the exposure of the liabilities to future longevity improvements and could even increase the chances of a buyout further down the line by potentially reducing the cost. It will also examine:

• How longevity swaps can compliment an existing or planned LDI strategy
• The limitations of longevity swaps and why they can only protect certain segments of your scheme membership
• How such swaps can be implemented and how much they cost
  Andrew Gaches, Longevity Consultant, Club Vita
  

12:05 - 12:20 Group Q&A

12:20 – 13:30 Lunch

13:30 - 13:50 Buy-ins

Even though many firms cannot afford the cost of complete a full insurance buyout, many companies and schemes are looking at buy-ins, where a scheme purchases an insurance contract to cover the future liabilities of just a certain section of its membership. This session will look at what these buy-ins are and how they can work in practice. It will also examine:

• How to put a buy-in deal in place – the differences between do-it-yourself and insurer based options
• Communicating buy-in strategies to members
• Looking at what buy-ins do not do. How responsibility for pensions remains with the scheme.
  Jay Shah, Partner, Pension Corporation

13:50 - 14:10 Buyouts

For many companies, the ultimate goal of de-risking is to completely buy-out scheme liabilities with an insurance firm – a deal which will mean the insurer takes on all future liabilities for the scheme. It will examine:

• How to implement these strategies and why quick decision making and good quality data is essential for such a deal
• The cost of buyouts and how much a company should expect to pay for this level of protection
  Emma Watkins, Head of Relationship Management, MetLife Assurance

14:10 - 14:30 Planning a risk reduction roadmap

While many firms would prefer to de-risk their pension scheme in entirety, this is an unaffordable option for most companies. Instead, sponsors and trustees need to have a clear plan for how they are going to de-risk over the coming five to 10 years and prepare accordingly
Paul Jayson, Partner, Barnett Waddingham

14:30 - 14:45 Group Q&A

14:45 - 15:00 Coffee

15:00 - 15:50 Panel discussion

The future of risk reduction:
How will the market develop? What products and services will pension schemes and sponsoring employers need in order to help reduce the risks posed by their pension scheme?

Chair: Jonathan Stapleton, Editor, Professional Pensions
Paul McGlone, Principal & Actuary, Aon Consulting
Jim Bligh, Senior Policy Adviser – Employment and Pensions, CBI
Emma Watkins, Head of Relationship Management, MetLife Assurance
Owen McCrossan, Investment Director, Standard Life Investments

15:50 Chairman's closing comments

View the programme in PDF format (124 KB)

The Programme brochure is in Adobe Acrobat format.
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