Buck has launched Echelon+, a solution to defined benefit pension governance that helps trustees and sponsors avoid escalating complexity and achieve their long-term goals.
Buck’s trustee consulting, administration and technology services are delivered through a single fixed annual management charge model, providing exceptional certainty and value. Echelon+ combines the flexibility and independence of a traditional approach with the efficiencies of a master trust. It was created in collaboration with independent trustees and is geared at schemes seeking quick decision-making and fee certainty while maintaining overall control and improving member satisfaction.
Echelon+ offers an online member portal with illustrated transfer valuations, retirement quotations, newsletters, and improved member communications and education, all with an emphasis on members.
Stride, Buck’s online fundraising and risk monitoring platform, powers Echelon+. The updated edition contains a real-time dashboard that provides access to information on plan governance concerns such as funding, investment, pension administration, and progress toward strategic funding and investment goals.
Buck UK managing director David Piltz says: “There’s been a real focus on consolidation and improving efficiencies in the defined benefit pensions market, especially among smaller and medium-sized schemes, to deal with the growing time and cost pressures of complying with increasing legislation, governance, and journey planning requirements. At Buck, we see a real opportunity in the market to offer a service to trustees and sponsors which provides the benefits, efficiencies, and certainty of consolidation, whilst allowing them to retain control of the key decisions impacting the long-term future of their scheme.
“Put simply, through Echelon+, we enable defined benefit pension schemes to reach their objectives quicker, and for a lower cost. We have already seen real interest in this and are looking forward to bringing this solution to a wide range of schemes in the coming months.”
