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The trm Report - June 2006 You are a pension trustee and you know the new requirements for knowledge and understanding kicked in on 6 April. You are uncertain how you can update your learning to meet the new requirements by 6 October this year – the regulator’s six-month grace period. Or perhaps you feel you know a fair bit but are unsure of how to check for gaps in your knowledge. Now there is a way you can do this at a time that suits you, for free, and possibly even have fun on the way! Intrigued? Well, read on! The Pensions Regulator’s Trustee toolkit is a completely free, practical and interactive online e-learning training programme designed to improve trustees’ knowledge and understanding and help them meet statutory requirements. It is also relevant to anyone with an interest in occupational pensions, including those working in the industry. The fully interactive programme engages learners through stand-alone modules designed by e-learning and pensions experts to be interesting and even fun (according to our online research), and which draw heavily on real-life case studies. Learners find themselves immediately thrust into a multi-media environment, playing a part in the pensions equivalent of a soap opera in which they join a trustee board and start participating in the real-life decisions that have to be made. So, if you log in to www.trusteetoolkit.com what will you find? Or perhaps more accurately, who will you meet? Well, there’s Meryl Jacobs, the human resources manager, an employer-nominated trustee who is also chair of the board. She is about to go on maternity leave and there is an issue about who should take over as chair. There are two other employer-nominated trustees: Edmund Hall, the finance director and Paul Baines, head of operations. In a later module you’ll find that Paul gets poached by a competitor. As well as the learner, there are two other trustees who have been nominated by the members: Alicia Graham, who is the trade union rep, and Rodney Grant, who is already a pensioner. And then there’s Tony, the scheme administrator who is responsible for all the back-room work. And what do these individuals get up to? Well, they have to make real decisions about the real issues faced by trustees, such as:
In working through these issues with the other trustees, supported where appropriate by the scheme’s lawyer and other advisers (not forgetting Adam, your personal coach), you will start to acquire a clear understanding of the role of trustees. The first modules on pensions and trust law are already available on-line. Further modules on funding and investment topics will follow in the next few months so that the complete programme will be available from early autumn. The programme has been designed with busy trustees in mind. In each module learners are asked about their confidence on the topic, by means of a short diagnostic. If you feel up to it, you can attempt the Question Time assessment straight away; if you are less sure, you can start by working through the scenarios, where you will meet the characters. Most of the learning is in the tutorials which you can access as you go. There are also real case examples. A Certificate of Completion will be awarded to learners who satisfactorily complete all of the Question Time sessions at the end of each module. Individuals who do particularly well can achieve a distinction. The certificate will be sent automatically once all relevant modules have been completed. At no point will the Regulator be tracking an individual’s progress – although it may feel like a pensions soap, it is not Big Brother! The programme syllabus has been based on scope guidance which forms part of the Pensions Regulator’s code of practice on Trustee Knowledge and Understanding. Separate routes are provided for learners involved with defined benefit arrangements and for those concerned solely with defined contribution. Incidentally, any readers involved in advising trustees are encouraged to use this guidance as a reference for their own activities to ensure that their trustee clients are fully equipped to meet the legal requirements in respect of knowledge and understanding. So come and visit Trustee toolkit. We hope you find it educational and interesting – whoever dared suggest pensions couldn’t be fun! April Alexander
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