Global governance best practice

The background

Having implemented a pensions governance committee in the UK for our client, it became apparent that there was limited oversight for the head office for other locations’ pension arrangements. Head office agreed that they needed to ensure they were carrying out best practice governance for their retirement schemes globally.

What we did

Our phased approach ensured that our client was able to focus on the key countries of concern first whilst ensuring that they had full oversight of the retirement arrangements in place around the world:

• Phase 1: Understand the pension arrangements in place – working with local management and our international network of local expert partner firms, we have helped our client understand the types of schemes they have in place and what risks they have. In some cases, this led to a need to refine the offering or implement new plans where it was clear there weren’t any.
• Phase 2: Implement a standard governance framework – we helped put in place a global governance framework that is used in all locations including a standardised reporting structure and identified key individuals who should be involved in the governance.
• Phase 3: Refine governance process – this included adding locations as new arrangements were set up and ensuring that the governance process could be followed in an efficient way. This was done by sharing best practice and ensuring our client could focus on areas where they were required to make decisions or exercise their influence.

The outcome

We now have a framework in place so that head office and local companies have clear oversight of their retirements arrangements, are kept up-to-date when market practice develops and can be ready to take action.