The onboarding of new members to Irish master trusts has led to “some administration capacity issues”, Ireland’s Pensions Authority has said.

Publishing its Engagement and audit findings report 2023, the authority said there are currently 276,812 active members and 124,235 deferred members in master trust schemes. Master trusts have €17.7bn AUM and and 20,822 participating employers. It noted that the master trust sector has continued to growth due to the consolidation in the DC sector.

“This widescale movement is leading to some administration capacity issues and the authority expects trustees to engage with administrators to ensure compliance is prioritised. All schemes moving into master trusts and PRSAs should have completed their wind up by the end of 2023.

“The authority is monitoring the compliance position across schemes and where schemes and their trustees cannot evidence a clear plan and timeline to complete the scheme wind up, they may be liable to enforcement action,” the report stated.

Furthermore, the authority said it is satisfied that all 17 master trusts meet the core requirements of the legislation and the Code of Practice for trustees but this should not be seen as an endorsement of the master trusts involved and the authority will apply a more in-depth focus on the schemes as part of the supervisory review process (SRP) programme which will start in 2024.

It also expects master trusts to approach compliance in a more proactive way, rather than relying on sustained engagement and prompting from the authority.

Six new master trusts were set up either at the end of 2022 or in 2023. In the first half of 2023, the authority concentrated on ensuring that these newly established master trusts met basic compliance standards. However, it is still engaging with two of these master trusts on the basic compliance standards.

Despite this, the authority is satisfied that overall, all new master trusts meet the requirements of the legislation and the Code of Practice for trustees. The authority said it will continue to engage with these master trusts and future engagement will involve a more in depth review of their operations and risks.

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