BAE shrinks pensioner committee in efficiency bid

The joint pensioner committee is an elected group of volunteers whose role is to represent pensioners across the defence company's schemes and to improve communication between pensioners, the company and trustees. 

BAE's pensions management team has undertaken a comprehensive review to assess the purpose of the committee and improve its operation.

The scheme is reducing the number of members on the committee to 20 from 28. This will take place over a two-year period in an effort to increase efficiency, with the scheme pointing to technological advances that have made communication with scheme members easier.

“[Since the creation of the JPC] communication methods have changed radically," said the body's chair Frank Spencer in a message to pensioners.

"As a result, during the last year or so we have undertaken a comprehensive review of the purpose and operation of the JPC to bring it up to date."

Communicating with pensioners 

Schemes can face two main challenges when communicating with their pensioners – the complexity of many details schemes are required to provide and the best form of communication to reach older members.

“There’s an incredible tension,” said Roger Mattingly, director at independent trustee group Pan Trustees. “You can create a communication that is completely compliant but incomprehensible.”

The levels of disclosure that schemes are legally obliged to provide for members can be extensive, said Mattingly.

He gave the example of requesting a transfer value from a scheme: “When you ask you get about 20 pages with it, pages of caveats and nuances. But if disclosure becomes too skeletal it runs the risk of being misleading.”

In the future schemes could benefit from creating committees to manage disclosures and communication in order to cut down on the amount of data members receive.

“I can see a stage where all disclosure goes to governance boards and committees and then they can then decide on the headlines,” said Mattingly.

Many schemes are forming committees with the aim of improving communications with different sectors of their membership, said Hetal Kotecha, director of Independent Trustee Services.

Some pensioners may be less familiar with computers and so schemes rely heavily on the use of paper communications and telephone helplines. “For some organisations a helpline is what members are really after,” said Kotecha.

Some schemes also invite members to their annual general meetings, or hold separate meetings to update members and allow them to ask questions.

“It’s about having the ability to pick up a phone or stand up in a room and speak with someone,” said Kotecha.

The current generation of retirees is a transitional one in terms of its familiarity with technology, but in the future schemes would most likely not use paper communications, Mattingly said.