Claire Rankin
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Claire is a specialist in pensions law. She has over 18 years' experience of advising employers and trustees on all areas of pensions law and practice relevant to defined benefit and defined contribution pension schemes.
Claire's practice includes pensions clients (trustees or employers) in many sectors, including financial services, transport and retail. As an expert in automatic enrolment, she also advises both UK employers and inward investors on their UK pension obligations.
I help trustee and employer clients comply with their obligations under pension law. As well as day to day advisory work, I help employers to establish compliant pension arrangements, manage existing pension liabilities (e.g. by way of pension increase exchange or bulk annuity buy-ins) and consolidate existing pension liabilities by merging schemes or advising on bulk transfers.
I also troubleshoot for clients, including advising trustees and employers on how to resolve errors within scheme documentation or by administrators, deal with over or under payments to beneficiaries and how to handle complaints from beneficiaries.
Pension scheme governance is a priority for the Pensions Regulator. Our team has produced a client briefing on effective systems of governance as part of a series of client briefings on transformation themes, which also includes the Pensions Dashboard and environmental reporting (for investments). These are in addition to our client briefings on the moral hazard regime as updated by Pension Schemes Act 2021.
Claire Rankin is always extremely thorough and she is clearly very knowledgeable. She is very approachable and willing to provide advice at short notice when required. She works well together with other scheme advisers."
A unionised manufacturing client on the closure of its defined benefit pension scheme to accrual.
A trustee of a multi-employer pension scheme on errors within its pension increase provisions, and on the amendment and compromise of such benefits with the affected members.
The trustee of a hybrid scheme on the bulk transfer of its defined contribution benefits to a master trust, including benefits with a GMP underpin.
The trustee of a multi-section defined benefit scheme in relation to equalisation for GMPs and GMP conversion.
Advised an employer on the equalisation of normal retirement ages between men and women
Advised trustees in connection with errors in scheme rules and options for correction.
Advised employer in connection with options to rationalise its legacy pension schemes following a corporate restructuring / merger.
As regulatory focus on governance and value for money increases, what do employers need to think about?
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As the UK approaches the end of the transition period, what steps should pension scheme trustees be taking?
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Trustees need to address value for members as consultation encourages consolidation of smaller schemes and removal of barriers to illiquid...
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One of the main barriers to schemes starting their GMP equalisation projects has been a lack of certainty as to...