Meet the Team

Background

Suresh has worked as a Professional Trustee for over 15 years. During that time, he has acted on a variety of schemes involving single and multi-employer schemes which are sectionalised or “last-man standing” in nature as co-trustee, chair or sole trustee.

Suresh is a pensions partner and member of the Association of Pension Lawyers. His previous roles have also included co-chair of the Non-Associated Multi-Employer Schemes (NAMES) group which involved actively lobbying the DWP, the Pensions Regulator and the PPF on behalf of schemes representing over £100 billion pension scheme assets.

Expertise

Suresh’s key areas of expertise are:

• Driving schemes through buy-out processes.
• Navigating schemes through litigation processes (whether to establish certainty on the level of benefits in a scheme or to settle claims against historic advisers).
• Improving scheme governance.
• Implementing complex funding arrangements such as asset backed contribution structures.
• Working with schemes in the manufacturing, charitable and retail sectors.

Check out what Suresh had to say in the Charities Management magazine article Ending the pensions nightmare for charities

Background

Adam has over 7 years of experience as a director of a professional trust company. His wide experience of occupational pension schemes includes defined benefit defined schemes and  defined contribution master trusts. He has also acted as co-trustee and sole professional trustee.

Adam is a pensions partner with over 20 years of varied legal experience. He is a full member of the Association of Pension Lawyers and the Association of Professional Pension Trustees.

Expertise

Adam’s key areas of expertise are:

• He is a robust but pragmatic negotiator at ease at dealing with complex issues and factual scenarios involving corporate takeovers of sponsoring employers, funding issues, pension scheme mergers and insolvency. Wherever possible, while always protecting members’ interests, he will seek to work in partnership with the scheme’s sponsoring employer.
• With considerable experience in dispute resolution Adam is well placed to lead pension schemes in finding cost-effective solutions for problems arising from the professional negligence of previous pensions advisers, such as errors in scheme documentation.
• Adam has particular experience of schemes facing employer proposals to close scheme to future accrual and measures to de-risk pension schemes such as member option exercises and buy-ins and buy-outs of pension benefits.

Background

Parminder was a Professional Trustee of a large award-winning professional trustee company for over 10 years, managing several trustee appointments, from ongoing trustee appointments, schemes in wind-up, schemes entering the Pensions Protection Fund, to one-off projects.

As a professional trustee, she alongside lay trustees of the Olympic Airlines pensions scheme successfully changed UK pensions legislation to allow the Olympic Pension Scheme to enter the Pension Protection Fund, where there was no precedent and the scheme was not eligible, so allowing the scheme members to benefit from retirement benefits from the PPF.

Parminder has also sat on trustee governance sub-committees, and run trustee meetings, working with other advisors to ensure all compliance, governance and risk issues were handled correctly, as well as running pension litigation cases involving defective drafting, incorrect scheme practices and professional negligence claims. She has past dealings with the Pensions Regulators on its intervention exercises and clearance procedures.  She has successfully negotiated scheme mitigations in favour of members of schemes where wholescale scheme amendments were proposed by the employer as well seeing through to a satisfactory conclusion for all parties, tricky scheme funding negotiations.

Parminder’s work has often improved the governance of schemes and reduced risks, by training trustees as well as working with other advisors and employers to run an efficient scheme or one-off project.

Her work as a professional trustee means she is well placed to anticipate and avoid potential issues for pension schemes, lay trustees and employers during projects.