Managing your scheme

Your first port of call for managing your scheme should always be the Pensions Regulator's website at www.tpr.gov.uk. There is detailed guidance for trustees/scheme administrators to help you understand the role of scheme trustees and how to manage your pension scheme with a free online trustees toolkit, learning programme. There is also detailed guidance for employers.

We have produced a guide to help trustees understand their legal responsibilities. It provides a summary of legal responsibilities and directs to additional sources of information. This is held in the document library. The content of the guide is Zurich's interpretation of the rules and regulations. Whilst every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the information, the Company cannot accept responsibility for it. You may wish therefore to take legal advice on these matters.

Also in the document library are the rules that we may have recently written to you about. Please check your letter for the correct reference. As with any legal document, you should speak to your legal advisers to check that these rules are appropriate for your scheme.

When you are ready to adopt these new scheme rules please complete the resolution enclosed in your letter with the following details:

• the name of the principal employer


• the name of the scheme


• the signature of the principal employer and date


• the signature of the trustees and date.

Please return one copy to us using the address in the letter to confirm that the new rules have been adopted.

Record keeping

It is the trustees' responsibility to ensure that record keeping requirements are met. If we hold scheme records, we will write to trustees prior to the scheme renewal and either confirm we have all the information needed for the scheme members, or enclose an invalid/missing common data report which we ask the trustees to complete and return. We only provide limited conditional data. Please note the information we provided relates to records we hold and trustees will have additional records to consider. The Pensions Regulator is to ask trustees to report on record keeping in their scheme return to help improve standards. Please see TPR's record keeping quick guide in the document library.

Managing your scheme

Zurich provides an insurance policy for your scheme. This means that we are not scheme administrators and do not provide administration services including record keeping for your scheme. We will pay out realisable values or benefits that have been secured under the policy but trustees and scheme administrators are responsible for ensuring the correct scheme benefits are paid to members.

Due to equalisation rules, your members may have benefit entitlements under our policy at both ages 60 and 65. We will provide retirement packs at age 65 to help support you but it is the responsibility of trustees /scheme administrators to claim benefits at the required time. Please remember the policy terms expect you to claim members’ benefits by age 75 at the latest.

Your first port of call for managing your scheme should always be the Pensions Regulator’s website at www.tpr.gov.uk. There is detailed guidance for trustees to help you understand the role of trustees and how to manage your pension scheme with a free online Trustees Toolkit, a learning programme. There is also detailed guidance for employers.

We can provide certain administration services. Please refer to the Defined benefits scheme adhoc charges document in the document library.

Managing your scheme

In 2014 there were reviews carried out into improving the governance of money purchase pension schemes. Following these reviews the Financial Conduct Authority set out rules for committees to be established from April 2015 to act completely independent of a provider with primary duties to act in the interests of group personal pension scheme members to make an objective assessment that members are receiving value for money.

Zurich’s Independent Governance Committee (IGC) began its work in March 2015 and you can find details about the members and the work it has carried out with Zurich and intends to carry out in the future in the IGC reports in the document library.

In 2016 the Zurich IGC commissioned research into members’ attitudes towards value for money to better understand its meaning and is collaborating with ten other IGCs in a benchmarking research project.

Zurich is the scheme administrator for your GPP (apart from Platform funds where the scheme administrator is Sterling ISA Managers Limited) and has administration responsibilities including discretion to pay lump sum death benefits unless members have put their plans into trust where we will pay to the trustees of the trust. To help Zurich consider members’ wishes, members who do not have an individual trust, should be reminded to complete and update their nomination of beneficiary forms. You can obtain these by asking your usual Zurich contact.

As the sponsoring employer you have a responsibility to manage your scheme and work with your adviser to ensure it meets your requirements and provides good outcomes for your members. You also have certain responsibilities on communicating with your members.