By identifying and removing those risks that your scheme is not paid to take, and keeping or increasing those risks that lead to high rewards.
We have a passion for working with small schemes and have developed our approach specifically to suit their needs.
Often trustees of small pension schemes are limited by budget and available time when seeking investment advice. We help you focus your resources on areas where they can make the most difference, especially asset allocation. According to research quoted in the Myners Report, asset allocation is the most important factor, accounting for 93.6% of the difference between pension schemes returns. Complex work that is worthwhile for a £1bn scheme is rarely justifiable for a £10m scheme: advice that costs more than the value of any resulting benefit just wastes money.
Many aspects of investment are finely balanced, but it would not help you if we ‘sat on the fence’. So we clearly state our recommendations. We’ll also point out the available alternatives and the reasons for our conclusions.
What is more, we aim to explain everything in plain English. This does not always come naturally to actuaries, so we use professional editors to help us.
Trustees of most schemes below £50m tend to be very conscious of fee levels (rightly so, given that it is not their money being spent). A consultative approach with meetings every quarter to develop strategy can be effective. But it is costly. And time consuming. So it’s not often appropriate for small schemes. We offer you an alternative: sound, cost-effective investment advice via a series of tools and packages, mostly with fixed, predictable costs. You only see us when you need us. You only pay for what you need. So you save time and money.
A lot of investment advice, while useful, is generic. For example, the issues we raise when advising on gilts versus corporate bonds or active versus passive management will be the same for all of our clients. So we’ve decided to give this to you for free. We will direct you to the specific resources on our website barkertatham.com and you are welcome to access this yourself whenever you choose. This means that we can concentrate on helping you with the aspects that are specific to your scheme, so that you get an investment strategy that best meets your needs.