The background

We were tasked with carrying out an exercise to help an organisation identify a suitable independent professional trustee to chair the board of a large and complex defined benefit scheme.

Our solution

We played a key role in ensuring the successful completion of this project through:

• Meeting with the current Chairperson to understand the Board’s objectives, the dynamics of the board and any skills/experience gaps that needed to be filled
• We reviewed the scheme documentation to understand the trustee appointment powers and drafted a Request for Tender (RFT)
• We worked closely with the Trustee Chairman and the organisation’s Procurement Department to ensure that the RFT met the Board’s needs as well as the company’s compliance needs (such as minimum level of turnover, tax clearance, insurance levels, etc)
• Once the RFT was approved, we issued it to several well-known professional trustee firms
• We managed the tenderers’ Q&A, reviewed the responses and set out a recommended shortlist of trustee companies to meet
• We facilitated the trustee presentations as well as the post-presentation discussion
• Arriving out of a robust discussion, the project team identified a preferred professional trustee.
• We arranged for the trustee to meet the rest of the trustee board
• We the assisted with the on-boarding of the new trustee

This project required

• Strong project management skills - LCP acted as the project manager to coordinate the process.
• Specialist advice - LCP drew on in-house expertise in a number of areas such as pensions and investment in order to facilitate the effective interview of the tendering companies
• Cost control – this project was approved on the basis of a fixed fee.

The results

A high-calibre, skilled and experienced independent professional trustee was appointed to chair the trustee board.