“Good progress” has been made by Irish master trust trustees in relation to governance and management structures, according to Ireland’s Pensions Authority.

The Pensions Authority’s Master trust compliance report detailed master trusts’ progress in relation to the Code of Practice for trustees (the Code), which was issued in November 2021 following the transposition of the IORP II Directive.

The authority engaged with 12 master trusts in 2022 and is collecting data from these master trusts on a monthly basis. The data includes the number of active and deferred members, the level of assets under management and the number of participating employers.

“Overall, and particularly since the authority first conducted its engagement programme with master trusts in 2020, good progress has been made by trustees in improving governance and management structures and standards for master trusts across the board,” the authority noted.

However, the authority noted that these are minimum requirements, and therefore, it plans to apply a more in-depth focus on the requirements of the code as part of its ongoing supervisory review process.

Going forward the authority expects master trusts to approach compliance in a more proactive way rather than relying on sustained engagement and prompting.

“The authority sees the master trust sector as being of systemic importance for the future of Irish pensions provision especially considering the large number of small pension schemes that will likely transition to master trusts. In this respect, the authority will continue to engage extensively with the sector so there can be no doubt about the minimum standards expected to deliver optimum outcomes for pension scheme members,” the report stated.

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