Employers’ default pension strategies need to be member-led and cater for their organisation’s average pension scheme member, said Madeline Forrester, head of institutional sales at Axa Investment Managers, during an interview with Clare Bettelley, associate editor at Employee Benefits.
“[Employers] need a variety of talents within the group leading [the strategy], and they should be relatively senior within the organisation,” she said. “But I think most importantly, [the project] needs to be member led.
[Employers] need to start with a very strong idea of the outcomes [that they are] trying to achieve for [their] members and what [their] members, on average, want because it is the average member who is most likely to end up in the default [pension].”
Forrester said employers should approach their default fund strategy as they would any other business project, and collaborate with their project management and commercial peers.
She added that her default fund of the future would better engage employees and earn their trust.
Forrester participated in a panel at Employee Benefits’ roundtable event, The future of default funds, held in December 2013 and sponsored by the Defined Contribution Investment Forum.
The roundtable debated a range of default fund issues in the context of pensions auto-enrolment, from the extent to which default funds are fit for purpose to how employers can communicate their default fund options to employees.
Read the digital edition of The future of default funds.
