A guide to the PPF's time-saving provider panels

This is centred around a core of three law firms, which will provide the most part of the scheme’s service requirements.

If you have got a panel member, they are working to a set timescale and the same cost

There are another 10 companies “to advise where the PPF makes recoveries from insolvent employers and in particular on those occasions where there is a consensual restructuring”, the organisation said in a statement earlier this month.

As the scheme grows and matures, so does its need for specialist legal advice. For more on the workings of that panel, see the column on the following page.

But the refreshed legal panel is just the latest in a long list of set-ups involving the PPF and industry providers to get value for its members.

The PPF's scheme panels

In August, the organisation launched its trustee advisory panel (see below), a group of companies to assist the trustees of schemes working through the assessment period.

This is the third of five such structures set up to improve the efficiency of the organisation and manage the cost and time required of schemes in assessment.

Sue Rivas, head of scheme delivery at the organisation, says the panels had led to a “real reduction” in the time it takes for schemes to go through its assessment period.

In the not-too-distant past, a scheme could have taken 36 months to go through the assessment process. “As of last month, it will have taken 20 months,” Rivas said.

Kevin Burge, relationships manager at consultancy Spence & Partners, adds panels made for more “straightforward” working relationships between the various providers and themselves.

“It’s a question of if you have got a panel member, they are working to a set timescale and the same cost and it gets delivered to you in the same framework,” he said.

“Everybody on the panel has bought into the fact that you want to get the scheme through in a set amount of time.”

Actuarial valuation panel

Set up in June 2011

Five actuarial companies were originally selected to provide section 143 valuations for pension schemes in the assessment period.

“Our pilot project has demonstrated that by using a dedicated actuary with specific knowledge and expertise to carry out underfunded s143 valuations, we can save time, reduce cost and improve the quality of s143s,” said head of PPF operations Phillip Beecroft at the time. “That is why we have decided to roll this out to other schemes in assessment.”

Specialist administration services panel

Launched in August 2012

Formed of eight companies, the PPF launched this panel in a desire to help give members “certainty” as soon as possible on the security of their benefits.

Such tasks include the reconciliation of guaranteed minimum pension entitlements and, more broadly, checking that the benefits being paid by the scheme are in accordance with its rules.

Trustee advisory panel

Launched in August 2013

This four-company panel was set up to help scheme trustees with the tasks required for a scheme to transition into the PPF or the Financial Assessment Scheme.

“We are looking to drive down the costs of a scheme while in assessment,” said panel manager Helen Beckinsale in a video published in August discussing the new structure.

The pensions lifeboat forecast as many as 120 qualifying schemes coming into the PPF over the year, Beckinsale said at the time.

Assessment Process Legal Panel

To be launched later in 2013

This is intended to link schemes up with law firms that can advise them on legal issues arising in the assessment process.

These will focus on admissible rules, benefits specification and equalisation. “We expect that the advice for those tasks will be delivered within the first 100 days of a scheme being in assessment,” says Beckinsale. This will enable a project plan to be built to solve those issues.

Auditors’ Panel

To be launched later in 2013

Members of this panel will audit schemes’ accounts as they go through the assessment process.

“It’s one of the thing that is done towards the end of the process but they take a long time,” says Rivas. The PPF will again expect these tasks to be done more quickly.

While panels will not come as a blessing to those providers that miss out on business, the PPF is clearly more interested in providing certainty for members.

“It’s about understanding that they are in the PPF and that their level of benefit is absolutely crystal clear to them,” says Rivas.

“People like the fact that the PPF is there, but all the time that they are in the assessment period they still feel a bit nervous because they do not know whether they are going to be in the PPF or not.”