One thousand employers have signed up for an Irish Life master trust that will consolidate management of workplace pension schemes.
Under new European Union rules, all company pension plans in Ireland were required by the Irish regulator to join a master trust arrangement by the end of this year or comply with significantly more onerous and costly governance rules on their schemes if they wanted to remain on a stand-alone basis.
Irish Life, the biggest player in the workplace pensions market in Ireland, says it has now passed the “milestone” of 1,000 employers joining its Empower Master Trust. As a result, that trust has €3.5 billion in assets under management and more than 75,000 members.
The company said a further 700 companies were either in the process of moving into the master trust or due to move across this year. Companies had to indicate their intentions on compliance with what is known as the IORP II directive by the end of January but have until the end of the year to complete any transfer to the new master trust arrangement.
In an update, Irish Life said 100 larger companies had adapted their own plans to comply with the new rules and would remain stand-alone.
About 200 smaller occupational schemes run by Irish Life remain undecided several months after the deadline, or have simply not engaged on the issue. The company said these schemes accounted for 10 per cent of its clients but only about 2 per cent of the aggregate assets under management.
“We’ve seen significant momentum in companies joining master trusts or adapting their existing pension plans to meet the IORP II regulations,” said Oisín O’Shaughnessy, managing director of Irish Life Corporate Business, adding that achieving the 1,000 company milestone highlighted the commitment that companies in Ireland had made to achieve IORP II compliance, “which is no small task”.
“However, some companies still have work to do to meet their obligations, and it is imperative that pension trustees for these company plans prioritise compliance.”
The deadline for a decision on compliance with the new rules, seen as the biggest shake-up of company pension schemes in decades, has already been extended by a year from its original end-2022 date.
