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                Welcome to the April SPP News.
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                This month, we invited the PPI to join us, for an online
                event exploring their Pensions Framework research.
                This has been a multi-year project for them and is intended
                to inform long-term policy making in the UK pension
                system. At SPP, we both want to bring you events that will
                directly support your daily work, and also to offer you
                content that will be relevant, but of broader interest. The
                Pensions Framework was intended to fit the latter and it is a
                fascinating research programme. If you were not able to
                attend, the recording is now available and we will note with
                interest how the project develops. If their aspiration that future
                policy developments will be capable of simulation in the model,
                exploring the impact they will have on adequacy, sustainability
                and fairness, it may help to support advocacy across the sector.
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                I hope that you have a good month ahead and thank you for your
                continued support.
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This session explored the Framework - a strategic, multi-year project that aims to support and inform long-term policy making in the UK pension system. We looked at its three key indicators - fairness, adequacy, and sustainability - which offer a comprehensive perspective on the current pensions system. Our speakers analysed the impact of potential future changes and illuminated relationships and trade-offs within that system.
Here we explored the strategic arguments for exiting illiquids, we heard about the use of secondary markets and the assessment of pricing and we considered the legal and contractual aspects of holding and exiting illiquids. This was within the context of emerging trends in the buy-out market and long-term target planning requirements in the forthcoming DB Funding Code.
The Pension Scams Industry Group’s Interim Practitioner Guide has been reviewed.
SPP response to IFoA's consultation on Proposals for Regulatory Requirements on DEI.Â
The potential risk to DB schemes from index linked gilt holdings was examined by Natalie Winterfrost in Professional Pensions.Â
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The potential benefits of CDC framework extensions are explored by Edd Collins in Professional Pensions.
The future of the UK gilt market was explored by Robert Scammell in View From SPP in Pensions Age (page 19).
Samantha Brown - Council Member
Sam is Managing Partner for Herbert Smith Freehill's Employment Pensions and Incentive practice and a pensions specialist. Her practice encompasses a wide range of pensions matters, acting for employers, trustees, professional advisers and other pensions stakeholders. She has extensive experience advising commercial clients on funding and covenant negotiations, and on addressing issues relating to defined benefit schemes in the context of corporate transactions. Her practice is also focused on advising pension scheme de-risking through the insurance market and on matters of benefit design and liability management. Sam is also experienced advising a range of clients on claims for professional negligence, breach of contract and declaratory proceedings. She is Chair of Trustees of United for Global Mental Health, a LawCare Champion and a Leader on the inaugural InsideOut Leaderboard.
Steven Hull - Council Member
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Steven serves on the SPP’s Council, having joined Council in 2022. Steven is a solicitor and a partner in the Pensions team at international law firm Eversheds Sutherland having spent his legal career in the pensions industry.
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As unusual as it may sound, pensions has not always been Steven’s first love and studying law at University was something of a fall back just in case a career in cricket didn’t take off. Far from taking off (it barely reached the runway) his cricket career – if you can call 4 days at £20 per day for his county in 1983 a career – quickly gave way to his fall back, to which he has been adjusting ever since. After nearly 36 years in the law, he’s still getting the hang of it.Â
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Steven started his legal career at the law firm Nabarro Nathanson in 1987, discovering with some disappointment there wasn’t a cricket law department (sports law being far too broad to be attractive). Floundering, he found solace as an Articled Clerk in their pensions team, qualifying as a solicitor in 1989. Practising from attic rooms in the West End, Pensions law was very different in 1989 and a quiet, unassuming and uneventful career of handling dusty trust deeds among wonderful colleagues and knocking off at 5.30pm beckoned invitingly. Moreover, to his delight Nabarros had a very successful cricket team, knocking off at 3pm and taking on clients in competitive matches at Richmond Cricket Club every (and I do mean every) Wednesday afternoon throughout late April to early September. They had an annual fixtures list, a sponsorship deal with Richmond, an annual tour to the West Country and a team Secretary (who in his spare time doubled as the firm’s Facilities Director). Steven’s life was complete.
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Then came Mr Barber, then Mr Maxwell, then Professor Goode and the rest is history… Oh, how things have changed.
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After stints in New York in the 1990’s for a US law firm, then in the London office of another US law firm, then at City firm Ashurst, Steven finally found his home in the wonderful Pensions Team at Eversheds Sutherland where he acts for employers and trustees dealing with a broad range of issues affecting defined benefit and defined contribution schemes (but only when not dreaming of what might have been of course…)
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Aside from cricket and pensions, his other loves are his wife and his 5 and a half year old son, through whom he currently lives his alter ego, although the homework has come as a surprise however.Â
