The number of professional trustee appointments is slowing as the market matures and increasing numbers of defined benefit pension schemes have successfully moved through insurance buyout to wind up, according to a report from Willis Towers Watson.
WTW’s professional trustee survey showed that while appointments continue to rise, growth has moderated sharply in recent years, falling to 3 per cent in 2025 from 8 per cent in 2024 and 12 per cent in 2023.
According to WTW, this reflects a shift in the market where strong funding positions are accelerating endgame strategies and schemes are increasingly transferring liabilities to insurers and therefore exiting trusteeship arrangements altogether.
Around 2,500 professional trustee appointments are now in place across defined benefit schemes, which means approximately half of all DB schemes now use at least one professional trustee. As schemes reach settlement more quickly, new appointments are increasingly offset by those ending following buyout and wind up.
Hazel Kendrick, head of strategy relationships at WTW, says: “The professional trustee market is entering a more mature phase. Growth in appointments remains positive, but it is now being influenced by more schemes reaching their endgame and transitioning to buyout.
“At the same time, we are seeing clear momentum behind the sole trustee model, as schemes prioritise speed and clarity of decision-making. The inclusion in our research of professional trustees who are not part of a firm also underlines how different governance models are meeting different needs.”
The report also found that most professional trustee firms already have formalised oversight panels (89 per cent), internal audit of decision making (83 per cent) and documented evidence of the options considered (78 per cent). Nearly half of firms (44 per cent) also plan to add external perspectives on key decisions and to rotate trustee teams.
