XPS Group has launched a new platform designed to help smaller DB schemes achieve a faster buy-out.
The end-to-end solution, XPS Catalyst, is aimed at schemes with less than £15m in assets. It is offering a platform that enables these schemes to access viable endgame solutions, securing member benefits quickly.
There are around 5,000 DB schemes int he market, and around 1,850 have less than £10m in assets. According to the PPF almost half of these are already fully funded on a buyout basis, yet over 600 remain financially ready but still uninsured.
While a small proportion have managed to transact in the past year, XPS estimates there are still hundreds of smaller pension schemes that would like to secure buyout, but are struggling to access the market.
Catalyst tackles the main barriers to buyout including data preparation / cleansing, drafting benefit specification and GMP equalisation.
By harnessing expertise from across XPS’s insurance, risk settlement, actuarial, investment and administration teams, schemes can be onboarded in as little as five weeks and can secure an insurance transaction in as little as three months. The pension consultancy firms says that in some cases it can take smaller schemes year to reach this position.
XPS Group partner Steve Morris says: “Really small pension schemes have been neglected for too long. Trustees tell us that their schemes are fully funded and want to buyout, but they struggle to get the support needed to attract insurer attention.
“This makes getting to buyout trickier and more expensive than it needs to be, and in some cases, impossible. XPS Catalyst has been specially designed to resolve this by putting the right people and processes in place to get schemes out to market quickly.”
