Retirement trust services

Trustees play a vital role in delivering high-quality defined benefit (DB), defined contribution (DC) and hybrid retirement arrangements. But with ever-changing legislation, increasing cost pressures, and additional complexities and risks associated with managing plans, trusteeship is an increasingly difficult and complex role.

WTW provides a full range of consulting services to trustees of retirement trusts in India.

We help companies with the initial setting up, regular updating, ongoing monitoring and wind-up of retirement trusts. This includes Provident Fund trust, gratuity trust, superannuation / pension trust, welfare trust etc.

Our services include:

• New trust deed documentation and set up.
• Updating trust documents and drafting deeds of variation.
• Updating trust documents due to corporate transactions, including deed of amalgamation / participation / demergers, etc.
• Deed of wind-up / dissolution of trusts.
• Filing and arranging for regulatory approvals, as necessary.
• Consolidation of the original trust documents with subsequent deed of variations, followed by seeking approval from the concerned regulators.
• Support with gratuity / superannuation fund manager selection.

Trustee's stakeholder relationship

We assist companies with ongoing governance activities and assurance studies relating to the management of retirement plans; in particular for statutory benefits such as Provident Fund and Gratuity. Such studies are usually conducted to undertake an independent review of the current governance status, to be on top of regulatory developments, to identify areas of efficiencies / economies of scale where possible and mitigate risk of loss of knowledge due to change in personnel.

Our services include:

• Support with vendor selection for Provident Fund compliances and administration.
• Conducting a thorough health-check (of documents, legislation and regulations, administration, and taxation aspects).
• Operational review of internal processes.
• Review and mapping of roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders involved in the management of retirement plans.
• Optimising operations and administration.
• Benchmarking trust functioning to market best practices.

With a gradual reduction in administration fees, and drastic improvement in services of the EPFO, companies are keen to evaluate the feasibility of maintaining their exempt Provident Funds. Moreover, complexities in the investment landscape as well as recent large bond defaults have enhanced the risk associated with managing in-house funds.

WTW offers a multi-dimensional approach to unbiasedly determine the feasibility of continuing with an exempt provident fund trust. The pros and cons are weighed in favour of both, trust maintenance and surrender, before equipping clients to take an unbiased decision.

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WTW's multi-dimensional PF feasibility study

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WTW's multi-dimensional PF feasibility study

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WTW also supports with the end-to-end implementation of surrender to the EPFO. This entails an end-to-end advisory solution to successfully accomplish the handover of an exempt provident fund back to the EPFO. This is a long-gestation project entailing regulatory and investment management expertise, Government liaising, co-ordination with client and client partners, and employee communications, bringing about consistent milestone-driven delivery.

WTW conducts regular training sessions for trustees of retirement funds, covering topics such as their fiduciary responsibilities along with an understanding of their rights and duties.

The session includes:

• Overview of retirement benefits landscape in India.
• Key legislative changes and regulatory highlights that impact retirement benefits.
• Market best practices with respect to management of retirement benefits.
• Key fiduciary responsibilities, rights and liabilities of trustees.
• Tax implications of retiral benefits.
• Investment and asset allocation guidelines.

along with an understanding of their rights and duties.

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Legislations governing trusts - A brief overview

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along with an understanding of their rights and duties.

Legislations governing trusts - A brief overview

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