Pension Fund Risk Management for Retirement Scheme Trustees Training Course

Course overview

Retirement scheme trustees must make decisions that protect member benefits over long time horizons while responding to market volatility, funding pressure, sponsor covenant change, operational failures, regulatory expectations and evolving member needs. A risk register alone is not enough: trustees need to understand how investment, funding, covenant, liquidity, governance and administration risks interact, which risks threaten scheme objectives, and when controls or contingency actions must be escalated. This course gives trustees a practical framework for governing these exposures and challenging advisers with confidence.

Participants learn to establish risk appetite and tolerances linked to scheme objectives; build and maintain a trustee-level risk register; assess inherent and residual risk; apply risk heat maps, control assessments and key risk indicators; and test plausible downside scenarios. The programme addresses investment and liquidity risk, defined benefit funding and employer covenant risk, defined contribution member-outcome risk, operational and cyber risk, third-party administrator oversight, and climate-related financial risk. Participants also learn how to structure risk reporting for trustee meetings and document decisions, actions and escalation routes.

The course is delivered through instructor-led briefings, worked pension-fund cases, board-style group discussions and spreadsheet-based risk assessment exercises. Delegates work through a simulated retirement scheme facing deteriorating sponsor strength, a collateral call and an administration incident. By the end of the week, each participant leaves with a tailored Trustee Risk Management Pack containing a risk taxonomy, draft risk appetite statement, risk register, key risk indicator dashboard, control-testing plan and 90-day improvement roadmap.

It is designed for new and serving trustees, trustee directors and pension governance professionals working across defined benefit, defined contribution and hybrid retirement schemes. It is equally valuable for employers and scheme secretariats seeking more consistent challenge, clearer risk ownership and better evidence for trustee decision-making.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a pension scheme risk taxonomy covering investment, funding, covenant, liquidity, operational and governance exposures
• Define risk appetite, tolerances and escalation thresholds linked to trustee objectives and member outcomes
• Build a risk register that records inherent risk, controls, residual risk, ownership, actions and review dates
• Assess sponsor covenant deterioration using financial indicators, dependency analysis and contingency triggers
• Evaluate investment and liquidity risk using stress scenarios, cash-flow forecasts and collateral requirements
• Design key risk indicators and a trustee dashboard for quarterly monitoring and exception reporting
• Test operational controls for administrators, custodians and investment managers using assurance evidence and control-testing plans
• Produce a 90-day integrated risk management action plan for presentation to a trustee board

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Pension Scheme Trustees — who must oversee risks affecting member benefits and challenge specialist advisers
• Trustee Directors — who need defensible risk governance across professional trustee appointments
• Pension Managers — who coordinate risk reporting, adviser inputs and trustee action tracking
• Scheme Secretaries — who prepare board papers and need to evidence risk decisions and follow-up actions
• Employer Pension Sponsors — who monitor funding, covenant and governance risks connected to retirement obligations
• Pension Governance and Risk Officers — who maintain scheme controls, risk registers and assurance reporting

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand the basic purpose and structure of occupational pension schemes, including the roles of trustees, sponsoring employers, actuaries, investment consultants, administrators and custodians. Familiarity with common terms such as defined benefit, defined contribution, funding level, asset allocation, employer covenant and trustee board is useful. Participants should be comfortable reading simple tables and charts and using Microsoft Excel for basic data entry and filtering. No actuarial qualification, investment-management credential, advanced financial modelling ability or prior formal risk-management training is required. Complete newcomers should expect to spend additional time reviewing pension terminology provided before the course.

Training methodology

The programme combines focused instructor-led teaching with pension-scheme board simulations and practical design work. Participants analyse trustee papers, funding extracts, cash-flow data, service-provider reports and incident logs to identify risks and determine appropriate challenge questions. Small groups build risk registers, score controls, set key risk indicators and debate escalation decisions from the perspective of a trustee board. Each day closes with an applied exercise that adds to an individual Trustee Risk Management Pack. On day five, participants refine their pack into a prioritised 90-day implementation plan for their own scheme environment.

Course outline

Day 1: Trustee risk governance and scheme objectives

• Trustee fiduciary duties and risk oversight responsibilities
• Pension scheme objectives, member outcomes and risk trade-offs
• Integrated risk management principles for retirement schemes
• Pension risk taxonomy for defined benefit, defined contribution and hybrid arrangements
• Risk appetite statements, tolerances and breach thresholds
• Inherent risk, residual risk and control effectiveness scoring
• Risk ownership, escalation routes and trustee decision records

Workshop: Participants map a simulated scheme’s objectives to a risk taxonomy and produce a first-draft risk appetite and ownership matrix.

Day 2: Funding, covenant, investment and liquidity risk

• Defined benefit funding risk drivers and recovery-plan dependencies
• Employer covenant indicators, affordability assessment and downside triggers
• Asset-liability mismatch and interest-rate sensitivity
• Strategic asset allocation risk and concentration limits
• Liquidity forecasting for benefit payments, collateral and capital calls
• Stress testing market shocks and sponsor deterioration scenarios
• Contingency planning for funding and liquidity events

Workshop: Using a case-study funding position and sponsor data, participants complete a downside scenario analysis and propose covenant and liquidity triggers.

Day 3: Operational, third-party and cyber risk

• Pension administration error risk and member-data controls
• Service-provider due diligence and outsourced control frameworks
• Administrator, custodian and investment-manager performance oversight
• Control design, control testing and assurance evidence
• Cybersecurity threats to member records and payment processes
• Incident classification, breach response and root-cause analysis
• Business continuity and disaster-recovery testing for pension operations

Workshop: Participants investigate a simulated administration and cyber incident, create an incident log, and design a control-testing and remediation plan.

Day 4: Monitoring, reporting and emerging risk

• Key risk indicators and leading versus lagging measures
• Trustee risk dashboard design and exception reporting
• Risk-register review cycles and action-status governance
• Climate-related financial risk and stewardship oversight
• Defined contribution investment pathway and member-outcome risk
• Regulatory change scanning and compliance risk assessment
• Scenario analysis for demographic, inflation and market disruption

Workshop: Participants build a trustee dashboard in Microsoft Excel and define red-amber-green thresholds for a selected set of scheme risks.

Day 5: Board application and risk improvement planning

• Preparing risk-focused trustee board papers
• Challenging adviser assumptions and management assurances
• Risk committee terms of reference and delegated authorities
• Prioritising remediation actions by impact, urgency and feasibility
• Risk acceptance, transfer, mitigation and contingency decisions
• Assurance calendars and annual risk-management cycles
• Ninety-day implementation planning and stakeholder communication

Workshop: Participants present their completed Trustee Risk Management Pack to a mock board and produce a prioritised 90-day action plan with owners and milestones.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, ISO 31000:2018 Risk Management Guidelines, COSO Enterprise Risk Management Framework, The Pensions Regulator Integrated Risk Management guidance

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions