Trustee role
Committed and conscientious trustees play an essential role in the proper running of pension schemes. Our aim is to provide you with support and guidance to carry out your role with confidence. Your duties are wide-ranging - from the collection of contributions to the investment of assets and payment of benefits. The scheme members look to you to make sure that their pension benefits are secure.
If you are a trustee, or considering becoming one, you need to understand some basic details about pensions, trustees and the legal framework surrounding work-based pensions.
Your key duties as a trustee are to:
Act in line with the trust deed and rules
The trust deed and rules, together with pensions legislation, tell you what your powers are as a trustee, and the procedures you must follow. They are important documents and, therefore, you must be familiar with them and with the other documents governing your scheme.
Act prudently, responsibly and honestly
You must act in a way that a prudent person would in their own affairs. This means, for example, that when deciding whether to exercise a power you must consider the circumstances impartially, having taken account of all the relevant facts, and you must ask for professional advice if necessary.
Naturally, you mustn't make any personal profit at the expense of the fund. This doesn't mean that, as a trustee, you can't be a member of the scheme, but, as a lay trustee, you mustn't profit from the scheme in other ways.
Act in the best interests of your beneficiaries
Your first loyalty must be to the scheme beneficiaries, and you must always act in their best interests. A beneficiary is anyone who is entitled to, or who might receive, a benefit from the scheme, now or in the future.
Act impartially
You must consider the interests of all the classes of beneficiary covered by the trust deed and rules, and act impartially between them. You have to act fairly between indivdual beneficiaries too, weighing the interests of the particular individual against the need to protect the security of the beneficiaries as a whole.
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