Many pension scheme trustees are giving their advisers an easy ride and are not confronting issues that may be harming a scheme's overall performance, according to a former UK civil servant

Peter Askins, a director at Independent Trustee Services who used to draft pensions regulations at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), told a conference in London yesterday that trustees should be challenging their advisers on a more regular basis to get the best out of them.

Askins said that consultants were still using jargon that lay trustees were not familiar with and that they were making "assumptions about knowledge", leaving trustee boards too reliant on their advice or on the help of independent trustees.

He claimed that advisers and independent trustees should be transferring knowledge to lay trustees for them to use and then make informed decisions, rather than leading them to the conclusions that their advisers might want them to reach. 

"Every consultant says that (trustees should be setting an investment manager) a 1% target above a benchmark. Why?" he asked, making the point that many practices were just accepted, without being questioned.

Askins urged trustee boards to act in unison and to not be afraid to question whether their relationships with advisers were "cosy" or no longer working due to personality clashes or other external issues.

He also told the audience at the conference, organised by pension service provider RPMI, that Trusteeship was no easy job and that schemes were struggling to appoint new lay trustees. This was partly due to the burden of regulation that they now faced, which he helped to write. But he claimed that the blame for over-regulation lay with all parties.

"The industry has the regulation it deserves," he said. "There are so many vested interests, from the NAPF to the ABI, all going to the Government and asking for things to be done. Ministers respond to that demand."

mhandzel@wilmington.co.uk