This is a succinct summary of the trustees’ role from the Pension Regulator’s website. The regulator provides a substantial amount of support and guidance for trustees – not least of which is the well used trustee toolkit, a substantial body of work freely available to trustees and others interested in work based pensions.

Not only does trustee toolkit provide an excellent starting point for the new trustee it is also a valuable resource for those who want to go further than the certificate of completion provided at the end of trustee toolkit and tackle the external test of one of the PMI Awards in Pension Trusteeship examinations. These are based on the regulator’s indicative syllabus and provide formal recognition of a trustee’s knowledge and understanding (TKU) in line with the requirements of the Pensions Act 2004.

With both defined contribution only and defined contribution/defined benefit units there is an appropriate qualification for all trustees. Several hundred trustees each year have found sitting the examination a good test of knowledge, a boost to confidence and a very good thing to report to members as one indicator of the seriousness with which they undertake the role.

Trustee training has necessarily embraced modern business and educational practices in recent years with business plans, learning logs, annual reviews and learning needs analyses very much part of the trustee vocabulary.

There has also been an increased emphasis on training beyond that given on appointment. With the world of pensions and wider employee benefits changing so rapidly no trustee can afford to be without access to regular updating. Reading pensions industry and wider financial publications are a bedrock here and it is often not a shortage of information but of time which can be the issue for the busy trustee. Helping to distil the information further are advisers, training providers and event organisers, whilst the fairly new on line networks facilitate trustees from different schemes sharing information and learning from each others’ experiences.

As Alan Pickering says in a recent article for PMI News, ongoing access to training helps all those who act as trustees, “to sort out substance from marketing hype, it also means that our knowledge can be refreshed each time we have to make important decisions in areas where we do not enjoy daily familiarity”.

Details of PMI’s support for trustees can be found at www.pensions-pmi.org.uk or contact Gillian King on 020 7392 7401 or gking [at] pensions-pmi [dot] org [dot] uk