Trustees – save time and ensure compliance by having a business plan in place for your pension scheme.

Developing and regularly reviewing your scheme’s business plan will help you manage your scheme well, which will ultimately improve the outcomes for your members.

As part of its ongoing 21st century trustee campaign to raise trustee standards and improve the way pension schemes are managed, The Pensions Regulator has published an example business plan and annual planner template for you to use as a guide when creating or updating your own plan.

Visit The Pensions Regulator’s website to download their new business planning tools.

As a trustee, setting a clear purpose and strategy is essential to managing your scheme effectively and getting good outcomes for members.

Your scheme should have a business plan, which needs to cover:

• clear, long-term goals for your scheme and interim objectives around key areas of focus including governance, investments (and funding for defined benefit schemes), administration and communications
• how you propose to meet these objectives and goals
• how you will measure and monitor progress towards them

Download a sample business plan from The Pensions Regulator’s website, which will help you when considering your strategy.

Act now: Find out the consequences of not having a proper business plan in place for your scheme.

By failing to plan and prepare properly in your scheme, you could miss important legal duties, which may lead to a fine from The Pensions Regulator for non-compliance. If there are no long-term goals or interim objectives, the board is failing to govern the scheme effectively.

Having a business plan in place is all part of good scheme governance. Your business plan should help you to set a clear strategy and inform all that your board does.

The Pensions Regulator has examples of poor and good behaviour on its website, as well as an example business plan, to help you understand the actions you should take when setting a clear strategy and putting a business plan in place.