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DC benefits management

How to help clients manage schemes that provide defined contribution (DC) benefits.

DC code

Code of practice 13: Governance and administration of occupational trust based schemes providing money purchase benefits (‘the DC code’) sets out the standards we expect trustees to meet when complying with the law:

How-to guides

We’ve also produced six guides to help trustee boards meet the standards set out in the DC code:

Guides

1. The trustee board
Includes guidance on appointing new trustees, role of the trustee chair, board composition and board meetings

2. Scheme management skills
Includes guidance on training, working with advisers and service providers, conflicts of interest and risk management

3. Administration
Includes guidance on working with your administrator, core financial transactions, record-keeping and disaster recovery and business continuity planning

4. Investment governance
Includes guidance on designing investment arrangements (including default arrangements), reviewing investment strategy and performance, and financial and non-financial factors

5. Value for members
Includes guidance on assessing value for members and restrictions on costs and charges

6. Communicating and reporting
Includes guidance on engaging with scheme members, providing member communications and preparing a chair’s statement

Scheme assessment and master trust authorisation

Check the quality of your clients' DC schemes so that you and the trustees can demonstrate to employers and scheme members that you're running a quality scheme which is more likely to deliver good retirement outcomes.

People running a master trust pension scheme are required to obtain master trust authorisation.

Guides

Checking you run a quality DC scheme
Guidance for trustees on assessing the quality of their scheme

Authorisation of existing master trusts
Guidance for trustees on how to obtain master trust authorisation

Maintaining contributions

Managers of personal pension schemes have a specific role to play in ensuring that contributions to DC pension schemes are paid. You need to make sure you know and understand what your duties are and act upon them.

Governance best practice examples

We have published a number of best practice examples of scheme governance. These represent trustee behaviours we have observed which we believe that trustee boards striving for excellence can learn from.
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