Our award-winning DB pension consolidation platform, Enplan, brings professional trusteeship, administration services, actuarial advice and investment advice together under one structure and reduces the time and money spent by companies managing defined benefit pension schemes.
Enplan has been created in partnership with Isio and is designed to enhance an employer’s experience of sponsoring a defined benefit scheme and to improve the service delivered to the scheme’s members.
Running a defined benefit pension scheme has become more complex, time-consuming and expensive for trustees and sponsors. Regulatory requirements continue to grow, suitable lay trustees are harder to find, and the cost of running a smaller scheme in a traditional structure can no longer be justified by the value delivered.
Enplan is the platform we created with Isio to provide a better home for defined benefit schemes. The platform provides continuous pension scheme governance on a collective basis to drive economies of scale, while keeping each scheme’s legal identity, assets and journey plan entirely its own. It has been running for more than seven years and currently supports more than 70 schemes representing over £1bn in assets.
The Enplan Pension Platform brings under one roof individual pension schemes of different shapes and sizes that we run on a purpose-built platform. This grants you easy access to everything you need to run a scheme.
Entrust is appointed as the professional trustee of each scheme on Enplan. Isio provides scheme administration, actuarial advice and investment services. Between us, the scheme receives the level of service that would normally only be available to a much larger one. The services provided are underpinned by Isio’s innovative technology which enables daily monitoring of a scheme’s assets and liabilities. This means that decisions can be made more quickly and efficiently than they would be at traditional quarterly trustee meetings, so opportunities to deliver value to each pension scheme can be accessed as they arise.
Enplan brings together everything a defined benefit scheme needs under a single, integrated structure, providing the full range of pension scheme consolidation services, including:
Each scheme keeps its own ringfenced assets, its own legal identity and its own bespoke journey plan. There is no merging of schemes. What changes is the operating model: instead of working through a panel of separate advisers, the scheme is run by a single integrated team.
Through shared infrastructure and the buying power that comes with managing more than £1bn of assets across the platform, total scheme costs are typically reduced by up to 30%. Enplan provides access to scheme-specific information and professional advice, whilst still providing the cost savings that are available from managing multiple pension schemes on a collective basis.
Enplan provides continuous professional governance, peer-reviewed decision-making, documented policies and procedures, and a response capability available outside normal trustee meeting cycles. This gives smaller schemes the same continuous governance standard expected of much larger schemes. Within the platform structure, each scheme keeps its own identity and each employer can be involved as little, or as much, as they want in the running of their own scheme. This can significantly cut management time spent on pensions, whilst enabling employers to stay involved in key strategic decisions.
Each scheme on the platform has its own tailored journey plan, with access to the investment buying power, manager relationships and routes to insurance markets that small standalone schemes typically cannot reach on their own.
Members and sponsors receive a “big scheme” service at a fixed core cost. Decisions are made more quickly than at traditional quarterly trustee meetings, which means opportunities to deliver value to each scheme can be acted on as they arise.
Enplan is run jointly. We provide the independent trustee role, the governance and secretarial work, and the day-to-day oversight of the scheme’s advisers and service providers. Isio provides administration, actuarial valuations and journey planning, investment strategy and implementation, and member services. Both firms have been delivering this bundled package together for more than seven years.
We charge an agreed fixed core fee for the annual services every scheme on the platform requires. Non-recurring projects (a buy-out, a significant investment change, or a regulator-driven exercise) are scoped and agreed separately, so sponsors only pay for the additional work they actually need.
We are happy to discuss indicative fees during an initial conversation, before any commitment.
Schemes on the platform range from the low millions to the hundreds of millions in assets. Most fall between £10m and £200m, but we will have an honest conversation about fit either side of that range.
The transition typically takes weeks rather than months. We come in first as the appointed trustee, with actuarial and investment services moving across soon after. Administration services usually transition within six months, once the data move is complete.
Yes. Each scheme on the platform keeps its own legal identity, its own ringfenced assets and its own trust deed and balance of powers. There is no merging of schemes and no pooled liability.
Yes. The sponsoring employer’s responsibility for the pension scheme does not change. Enplan does not alter the covenant provided to the scheme.
Yes. Each scheme has its own bespoke journey plan, designed around its funding position, its timeframe to endgame and the employer’s objectives for the scheme. The scheme benefits from the platform’s collective buying power but retains its own strategy.
As much or as little as you would like. We are happy to accommodate sponsors who want to stay closely involved in key decisions, and equally happy to take responsibility for the day-to-day running of the scheme where the sponsor would prefer to step back.
We help any organisation that has a defined benefit pension scheme. Generally, the organisations which are likely to benefit most from running their pension arrangements under Enplan are those which: