Pensions Advisory Service
Fathom’s Pensions Advisory Service responds to UK local authorities’ concerns over upcoming reforms to Local Government Pension Schemes (LGPS). This service is designed to help clients navigate the rapidly evolving landscape, providing the independent insight and advice that 87% of respondents to the government’s consultation on the ‘Fit for the Future’ reforms anticipate they will need. The service also includes training, to equip your team as they step into their new roles.
Our service offers:
Training covering real-world topics in macroeconomics and financial markets, aimed at upskilling elected members and officers
Independent advisers providing the macroeconomic, geopolitical and financial market landscape to help you make more informed decisions
Advice on investment strategy, using Fathom’s proprietary suite of tools, including its model of a UK defined-benefit pension scheme (FIRM-DB)
Fathom on-call, giving you the option to email or pick up the phone with questions
Monitoring of fund performance, and identification of possible future risks
A newsletter service, including monthly UK updates and a comprehensive quarterly outlook on the global economy, including scenarios
Why this matters
The government’s ‘Fit for the future’ reforms will dramatically change the landscape for the LGPS. Administering authorities will lose a substantial degree of control over their investments, delegating much of what they did before to the pools. These changes coincide with a period of heightened macroeconomic, financial-market and geopolitical uncertainty.
Against this backdrop, local government schemes that responded to the consultation on the reforms emphasised the importance of having the ability, knowledge and information to hold their investment managers, and therefore the pool, to account.
Fathom’s Pensions Advisory Service provides rigorous, unbiased advice and guidance to help local government pension schemes navigate the challenges and uncertainties of these reforms with confidence.
Read our case study to see how our Pensions Advisory Service has already supported local authority pension schemes and significantly improved funding positions.
Client testimonial
“Fathom Consulting has supported the Newham Pension Fund by delivering independent economic research, scenario modelling and stress testing tailored to the Fund’s long-term objectives. Their expert analysis has helped the Fund to better understand global macroeconomic risks, inflation dynamics and asset allocation challenges, providing clear insights to inform investment strategy and governance.”
Rakesh Rajan, Pension Fund Manager, London Borough of Newham Pension Fund
Data, models and tools
FIRM-DB, Fathom’s Integrated Risk Management model of a UK defined benefit (DB) pension scheme, has been developed over a period of more than ten years. FIRM-DB can be used to assess the outlook for either an individual scheme or the whole pensions landscape, under a variety of macroeconomic scenarios and funding strategies.
The fan chart is an example of the insight that can be derived from FIRM-DB. It illustrates the funding outlook for a local authority that is facing a challenging macroeconomic and financial market environment, with each band representing 5% of the possible outcomes for scheme funding so that the whole chart covers 90% of the possible outcomes. FIRM-DB can be used to demonstrate to the client how the funding outlook shifts as alternative investment strategies are deployed.
Meet the team
