Business advisory firm
Deloitte is to expand its pensions advisory capacity as part of
what it termed an “aggressive growth plan” to treble the size of
its UK pensions advisory services practice within three to four
years.
The move, said Deloitte, is
in response to pension challenges becoming increasingly complex and
pervasive for many of its public and private sector
clients.
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Focus of the expansion,
explained Deloitte, will be to provide its clients with services
across three broad areas: the funding of pension schemes, benefits
strategy for employees and day-to-day pensions
operations.
Signalling success in its
expansion strategy, Deloitte’s pensions advisory services practice
head Tony Clare said in a statement: “We are attracting direct
approaches from the highest quality people in our
competition.”
In the initial phase of its
expansion drive, Deloitte targets to have more than 200
professionals in its pensions advisory services
practice.
Among new senior recruits are
the former head of corporate finance at retailer Marks and Spencer,
Eileen Haughey, and two PricewaterhouseCoopers partners, Richard
Slater and Mark McClintock.
Another aspect of Deloitte’s
growth ambitions in the UK’s pensions market was the launch in 2010
of Deloitte Pension Funding Partnership (DPFP), which the advisory
firm describes as “an innovative way to utilise an organisation’s
asset base to finance pension deficit obligations.”
To date, DPFP has been used to fund over £2bn ($3.2bn) of
pensions deficit obligations. Deloitte expects to announce a
further £2bn of PFP transactions over the coming months.
