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Pension risk transfer

Pensions & benefits

When it comes to transferring your pension risk to an insurance company you only get one chance to get it right.

How we can help you navigate your scheme's de-risking journey

From the early steps of designing your scheme’s strategic journey plan, through transaction preparation to the final negotiations for a buy-in, longevity swap or buy-out and wind-up, with LCP you’ll have the confidence of working with highly experienced leading industry experts. Whether your scheme is large or small we have one of the largest transaction teams in the market to guide you on the journey and take the stress out of transaction implementation.

LCP has a long track record in the market, dating back to designing and implementing the first buy-in in 2007 and LCP has been lead adviser on many landmark transactions. We were lead transaction adviser to RSA on their £6.5bn full buy-in with PIC, the UK’s largest ever buy-in. We were also lead transaction adviser to the British Steel Pension Scheme on their £7.5bn insurance programme with L&G, the largest scheme to reach full insurance, and we are lead adviser to the ICI Pension Fund, which has insured £9bn to date, more than any other scheme. At the smaller end, LCP’s streamlined buy-in/out service has insured over £3bn across nearly 80 transactions. Read more about LCP’s credentials here and how we compare with our peers.

One thing that sets LCP apart is that we are regularly brought in as a specialist risk transfer adviser, working collaboratively with the existing scheme actuary and investment consultant, to review buy-in, buy-out and longevity swap options. We don’t duplicate the work they do. Instead, our independent advice helps you plan, prepare and be ready to move with confidence. 

We have a suite of award-winning technology to help you do this. LCP Visualise provides everything you need to make joined-up investment, funding and risk transfer decisions. LCP LifeAnalytics is a leading longevity model combining expertise from LCP’s longevity and LCP health analytics teams to give schemes deep insight into their member’s longevity and help them to assess the value offered by a buy-in or longevity swap.

When it’s time to execute a transaction, we are skilled and experienced negotiators who work hard to make sure you get the very best outcome.

LCP Assure

LCP Assure

Helps small pension schemes to develop a strategic journey plan for a cost-efficient buy-out and wind-up.

Find out more

Are you starting out on your de-risking journey?

Explore the what, why and how of insuring pensions liabilities in our series of short videos.

Understand buy-in and buy-out market dynamics, key issues at the insurers and how to prepare to go to market with our latest insights here.

We are regularly brought in to help schemes design the preparation process. In our 'Beat the triage' report we consider the preparatory steps schemes should be taking so that they can run effective transaction processes that gets the maximum interest from insurers in a busy marketplace.

Are you a smaller scheme?  

If you are looking to transact a buy-in or buy-out under £200m, LCP’s streamlined buy-in/out service will help you obtain strong insurer engagement and transfer your risk efficiently at a fixed fee. By using LCP’s market-leading service, you benefit from more insurers quoting and better contractual terms than approaching the market directly.

LCP Assure is designed to assist small pension schemes in developing a strategic journey plan for a cost-efficient buy-out and wind-up with fixed fees.

Watch our on-demand webinar with experts from LCP and Aviva discussing options for smaller schemes.

Are you looking to better understand the buy-in market and available options?  

For schemes targeting a buy-in or buy-out in the future, it’s important to understand the insurer market dynamics and how the bulk annuity market has fundamentally changed since 2022. LCP’s pension risk transfer experts were the first to predict the step change in activity over 2023 following the LDI crisis. You can keep up-to-date with the latest insights in LCP’s regular de-risking update.

Read a selection of our pension risk transfer case studies:

Buy-out and wind-up-services  

We have taken many schemes through the full journey from buy-in through to wind-up and offer a joined up service delivering high quality advice throughout. Early planning is essential to ensure the wind-up process goes to plan. Read more about our buy-out and wind-up services here and what it means to complete a wind-up efficiently in the context of our LCP GEARS strategic framework here.

You can read about how we helped a client wind-up their pension scheme in record time here.

Our latest thinking

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How we can help

We are market leaders at each stage of de-risking, including journey planning, investment strategy, transactional services and wind up.

We help sponsors of pension schemes understand and manage the costs and risks associated with supporting their current and legacy pension schemes as well as other employee benefits.

We help trustees and sponsors of pension schemes understand and manage the costs, risks, timeframes, and opportunities associated with different pensions endgame strategies.

We help pension scheme trustees and sponsors to determine the ultimate destination for their scheme and help them put together a plan to get there, including how to effectively manage the risks they face along the way.

We help trustees achieve their strategic goals, with solution-led, appropriate advice.

Get in touch.

If you would like to know more about our services and how we can help you with pensions and benefits.

Contact Us