Editorial: A pat on the back?

A further 41 per cent think it is “fairly” effectual.

But is the cohesion starting to slip from scheme management? The proportion of respondents who felt the board was working well together was down six percentage points to 63 per cent.

And the proportion of schemes that are actually reviewing their investment strategy rather than simply monitoring performance has slipped to 45 per cent. This is down from a 2008 high of 68 per cent.

On the face of it, this could be a worrying slip in scheme oversight, or the impact of greater investment delegation on the trustee role.

But there could also be a simpler explanation. “You won’t review your strategy every year,” says Simon McClean, a director at Pentrus Independent Trustees.

A new strategy could be given a year to “bed in”, according to McClean. Unless it immediately underperforms, a yearly review is hardly necessary.

Last week we reported on the naughty trust-based defined contribution schemes that have not fulfilled their legal obligation to review their statement of investment principles every three years, or at the point of a significant policy change.

And I thought contract-based schemes were supposed to be the bad guys? You may have read about Heineken, which has created such a statement without any legal compulsion.

But principles must have something behind them. It remains to be seen whether contract-based governance committees – whether at employer or provider level – will have the necessary weapons and willingness to battle providers on behalf of their members.

The next issue of The DC Debate will continue the debate of where good governance fits into the DC landscape – whose responsibility is it, and how powerful can it be?

As always, feel free to get in touch with your views.

Ian Smith is editor of Pensions Week. You can follow him on Twitter @iankmsmith and the team @pensionsweek