The Wolseley Group moved its pension to a master trust arrangement following a review of its £230 million defined contribution (DC) scheme.
The group, which specialises in plumbing, heating, cooling and infrastructure, has more than 13,000 members in its pension. The organisation switched from its trust-based DC pension scheme, the Wolseley Group defined contribution pension plan, to the Aon master trust last year, says Ant Donaldson, reward manager at the Wolseley Group.
“The DC pension was set up about 15 years ago and which we used for auto-enrolling all new colleagues from 2014 onwards, when our old defined benefit (DB) plan was closed to the future accrual,” he explains
At the time that the Wolseley Group started the review, the scheme had approaching 5,000 contributing members, over 7,500 deferred members, and total assets of around £180 million.
The review took three months and was in line with The Pensions Regulator (TPR) mandate that schemes with assets below £100 million should assess their value for members, says Donaldson.
“We have always prided ourselves on the quality of our pension offering, so we wanted to challenge ourselves in the same way, to see whether we could improve members’ likely outcomes by using a different pension arrangement,” he adds.
Moving to a master trust enabled the organisation’s pension to benefit from the scale of investment offered but also able to maintain a degree of individuality and oversight.
“Once the decision to move to the Aon master trust was approved by Wolseley’s board and the existing pension scheme’s trustees, we ran a 60-day consultation across the business,” says Donaldson. “Members were kept informed by email, letter and through a series of webinars, every step of the way.
“Since the review, the pension’s assets under management in Aon’s master Ttust have increased to over £230 million, and we now have over 13,250 members. All in all, we’ve been really satisfied with how it’s all gone, despite the investment in time and resources it has taken to carry out each step of the process effectively.”
