Employee Benefit Advice

A key area of our business centres on advising small to medium sized companies on all aspects of their pension and insurance-related needs. For example, at the smaller end of the scale, IAS acts for a UK based international trade body (7 employees), advising on suitable pension scheme structures for the Director General and staff and administering the schemes on their behalf, in addition to dealing with the disability and life assurance schemes.

At the larger end of the scale, IAS has acted for the UK branch of an international firm of management consultants (500 plus employees) where we were involved in the setting up and on-going administration of a group personal pension for employees (dealing with all attendant communication issues including drafting the relevant sections of the firm's staff handbook) and where we were also responsible for running the group disability and life assurance schemes, providing advice on their structure as well as guiding the company through the claims management process, when claims arose. In essence, our brief was to provide a seamless extension to the company's in-house HR function and to deal directly with the company's employees, where appropriate.

IAS is frequently asked to provide one-off consultancy advice, ranging from advising on a specific pension issue (e.g. advising a senior executive on how to maximize pension benefits at retirement) to, perhaps, providing employers with a wider benefit review. At present, such a review might be prompted initially by the need to comply with stakeholder pensions legislation or, possibly, as a result of dissatisfaction with some aspect of the existing benefit structure (e.g. an Equitable Life with profits fund).

Our practical knowledge

We have been dealing with pension and insurance companies for 20 years. IAS therefore understands the marketplace, its strengths and, more importantly, its weaknesses.

We use this experience for the benefit of our clients, ensuring that when setting up and administering pension and risk benefit schemes, the pitfalls are avoided. Where life assurance and permanent health insurance schemes are concerned, for example, it is imperative that such schemes are tightly administered and comply at all times with the strict eligibility criteria on which membership is based.

For example, IAS has been involved in a case where due to a failure by a company to operate a PHI scheme in accordance with the original membership requirements of the insurer, cover has subsequently been jeopardized and a claim significantly reduced. The situation involved a scheme originally set up to cover "all employees" which was subsequently being operated by the employer on a selective basis, without the knowledge of the insurer. The company was unaware of any requirement to adhere to any specific membership criteria and asked us to investigate.

Unfortunately for the client, our sympathies lay on this occasion with the insurer who, in return for offering generous levels of cover free of medical underwriting at inception, had a right to expect the defined eligibility criteria of "all full time employees" (on which the "free cover" limits had been based) to be adhered to. In this particular case, the claim giving rise to our involvement has been reduced by £8,000 p.a. - avoidable had the employer been fully advised at the outset of the consequences.

An IAS strength is our attention to detail which hopefully means that this type of incident can be avoided.