Richard Jones: Helping clients with small DB schemes face ESG challenge

ESG policy ramping up

clock • 3 min read

Richard Jones asks while investments go 'green', what is the cost for smaller DB schemes? Here he outlines the issues advisers should consider for clients with final salary liabilities

Imagine a world in which 4,500 smaller defined benefit (DB) pension schemes in the UK each pay around £3,000 to create an ESG policy. Collectively, company sponsors would be spending ap[roximately £13.5m on meeting this regulation. Money that could be contributing to pension deficits for members. Each policy would also need to be reviewed and signed off by trustees, and if we assume this takes around two hours of trustee time for each trustee this could be around 9,000 hours of work across the industry. ESG would also need to be discussed and debated at every board meeting in the futu...

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