FOI reference - FOI-152
Date - 23 August 2023
Request
By reference to the latest Scheme Returns available to 31 March 2023, please can you confirm:
- The number of (a) Defined Benefit (DB) Schemes and (b) Hybrid Schemes
- The number of DB Schemes which are private sector schemes
- The equivalent data to the tables in FOI-5783 (as at both 31 March 2022 and 31 March 2023, if possible please, so that the data can be used for annual comparison going forward)
- How many unique professional individual trustees there are
- How many unique professional firm trustees there are
- How many sole professional trustees there are (I believe those will all take corporate i.e., 'firm' form)
- The Pensions Regulator’s (TPR) rules / guidance (if any) on the maximum number of appointments any one individual should hold as a professional trustee
Response
I confirm that we hold some of the information you have requested.
- I can confirm that we hold the information you have requested. However, it is exempt from disclosure under section 22 of the FoIA. This is because the information is intended for publication at a future date.
- I can confirm that we hold the information you have requested. However, it is exempt from disclosure under section 22 of the FoIA. This is because the information is intended for publication at a future date.
- Please find the requested information below.
Figures as of 01 April 2023
| Scheme Type (X) | Defined Benefit | Hybrid | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category of professional trustee | Individual | Firm | Individual | Firm |
| Number of (X) schemes with a professional trustee | 236 | 1,715 | 47 | 234 |
| Total number of (X) scheme | 4,667 | 844 | ||
| Percentage | 5.1% | 36.7% | 5.6% | 27.7% |
Figures as of 01 April 2022
| Scheme Type (X) | Defined Benefit | Hybrid | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category of professional trustee | Individual | Firm | Individual | Firm |
| Number of (X) schemes with a professional trustee | 243 | 1,618 | 50 | 219 |
| Total number of (X) scheme | 4,732 | 851 | ||
| Percentage | 5.1% | 34.2% | 5.9% | 25.7% |
Please note:
- The source for this data is TPR's records, based on the information received directly from the schemes in response to the mandatory Annual Scheme Return. Data is not weighted or imputed to account for non-response to the survey.
- All figures are from TPR's data as of 1 April 2023 and 1 April 2022 respectively.
- DB and Hybrid schemes are included.
- We have excluded parent, gone away, wound up and non-registerable schemes as standard.
- Schemes with less than 2 members have been excluded.
Context for questions D and E
For Part D and E, it is challenging to calculate distinct professional trustee as we do not collect data at a trustee level, instead we collect it as a scheme level. Due to the cost constraints, we were only able to perform the basic cleaning and matching.
- With professional individual trustees, we joint the first name and surname of the trustee, and performed basic cleaning (remove space, convert to upper cases) before calculating the distinct counts. There are some limitations to this method: 1) if two trustees with exactly same names, then they would only be counted as one unique trustee; 2) If the same trustee entered their name differently with variation, they would be counted as different trustee. Following this method, there are 2,549 distinct counts of professional individual trustees.
- With professional firm trustees, we explored various methods and decided that trustee’s email domain would be the best to use as a proxy for the trustee firm. The limitation with this method would be, for trustees use generic emails (e.g., use a domain like hotmail.com, gmail.com, etc) they would be counting as one unique trustee. Following this method, there are 701 distinct counts of professional firm trustees.
- I can confirm that we hold this information. However, it is exempt from disclosure under Section 21 of the FoIA. This is because the information is accessible to you, as it is already in the public domain.
- TPR does not have any rules or guidance on the maximum number of appointments any one individual should hold as a professional trustee. TPR does not set any limits on the number of professional appointments that one trustee can take.