Thursday 24 September
9.15am – 10.15am
Inside the dark world of criminality targeting workplaces and employee benefits … with Tech and cybercrime investigative journalist Geoff White
Inside the dark world of criminality targeting workplaces and employee benefits … with Tech and cybercrime investigative journalist Geoff White
Opening Keynote
Organised crime has become a shadow industry, mirroring the same structures, incentives and technologies that large organisations rely on every day. And as AI transforms the speed, scale and sophistication of cybercrime, criminal networks are finding new ways to target the money, data and trust that sit at the heart of workplace reward and benefits. The risks are now two-fold: threats to the organisation itself through ransomware, data theft, CEO fraud and cyber-enabled financial crime and threats to employees and pension members through identity takeover, social engineering, pension scams and fraud targeting lump sum decisions, beneficiaries and retirement savings.
In this thought-provoking opening keynote, tech and cybercrime investigative journalist Geoff White will take delegates behind the curtain of today’s crime scene, using real-world stories to show how criminals operate and where workplaces and their pensions and employee benefits are becoming exposed. He will explore how AI is not creating entirely new crimes, but is making existing fraud and scams faster, more convincing and harder to spot, while also highlighting the opportunity for employers to get ahead through stronger processes, awareness and defensive AI.
Moderator: Debi O’Donovan, Co-Founder and Director, REBA
Designing effective partnerships between employers, advisers and providers
Designing effective partnerships between employers, advisers and providers
Workshop
As DC pensions become increasingly important to reward strategies, financial wellbeing programmes and member outcomes, employers are navigating a growing network of providers, advisers and internal stakeholders.
This interactive workshop will explore what effective partnership looks like in practice, considering how organisations can maximise the value of their pension arrangements, strengthen collaboration and support better outcomes for members.
Through discussion and shared experiences, attendees will have the opportunity to consider:
- The evolving roles of employers, advisers and providers
- What successful pension partnerships look like across different scheme structures
- Ways to improve collaboration, governance and decision-making
- How employers can build momentum and deliver meaningful outcomes beyond formal governance meetings
- Approaches to measuring success and demonstrating value
This session is designed to encourage discussion, share practical perspectives and explore opportunities to strengthen partnership working across the pensions ecosystem.
Make every message count: Making pension communications accessible and inclusive
Make every message count: Making pension communications accessible and inclusive
Workshop
Employers are under increasing pressure to ensure their pension offering is not only understood, but genuinely accessible and effective for a diverse workforce, including frontline, low literacy, neurodivergent and other often unseen vulnerable groups. Join this workshop to explore how organisations can move beyond one-size-fits-all communication approaches to design more inclusive, data-led engagement strategies. Drawing on insights from pensions administration and member interactions at scale together, this action-driven session will examine how accessibility, vulnerability and behavioural needs should shape communication design and how this links to broader regulatory developments such as targeted support and outcomes-focused pensions policy.
Key discussion points
- Understanding your workforce beyond demographics: Identifying and segmenting at-risk and unseen vulnerable cohorts
- Behavioural principles that drive better pensions decisions: Understanding what actually drives member action and why traditional messaging often fails
- Designing for accessibility and inclusion: Practical checks for written, visual and face-to-face communications to ensure clarity, usability and relevance across different needs and capabilities
- Blending communications with targeted support and measurement: What emerging expectations mean for how employers communicate and support pension decisions and what this looks like in practice
Speakers
Integrating pensions, savings and financial goals at every life stage
Integrating pensions, savings and financial goals at every life stage
Workshop
Join this practical and interactive workshop exploring how employers can better connect pensions with ISAs, short-term savings and housing goals to support employees’ financial decisions across different life stages. We’ll examine how to understand employee priorities, frame competing financial choices, design more joined-up savings programmes and measure whether interventions are improving engagement, confidence and outcomes.
Key discussion points
- Measuring engagement and behaviour change: What good looks like when assessing financial wellbeing engagement, savings behaviour and the impact of employer-led interventions.
- Connecting pensions, ISAs, savings and housing goals: Helping employees understand the trade-offs and connections between short, medium and long-term savings priorities, from building emergency savings to saving for a home or increasing pension contributions.
- Designing programmes around real employee priorities: Using workforce insight to shape benefits design, including flexible contributions, workplace ISAs, payroll savings, savings buckets and targeted communications around key life moments.
- Simplifying financial decision-making: Creating clearer journeys, communications and nudges that make it easier for employees to take action, improve take-up and reduce complexity for both employees and benefits teams.
- Building the business case: Evaluating the cost, value and impact of integrated financial wellbeing programmes using engagement, wellbeing, retention and savings outcomes.
Closing the pensions value gap: making investment visible and meaningful
Closing the pensions value gap: making investment visible and meaningful
Workshop
With regulatory focus surrounding Value for Money frameworks intensifying, pensions practitioners are under pressure to demonstrate concrete ROI on pension spend. Yet pension risk is ultimately people risk. Failing to deliver clear value and guide members on the path to good outcomes, leads directly to reduced productivity, workforce retention issues, regulatory scrutiny, and costly operational fixes. This workshop will provide the timely framework employers need to look at beyond raw cost in order to quantify true scheme value to them and their people.
Key discussion points
- Diagnose the disconnect between cost and perceived value: Move past low-cost default traps to evaluate how investment returns, member engagement, and guidance directly drive better long-term financial outcomes
- Mitigate hidden people and business risks: Understand why proactive scheme optimisation and KPIs are vastly more cost-effective than fixing compliance failures, reputational damage, or employee disengagement in the future
- Build a compelling value narrative for the C-suite: Master the cross-over language between HR and finance to demonstrate clear return on investment and strategic return on value to both HRDs and FDs
- Quantify and measure impact: Go beyond hard investment performance metrics to measure true member retirement readiness and its direct impact on workplace productivity and workforce strategy
Whole-of-life CDC: could it help solve the retirement adequacy challenge?
Whole-of-life CDC: could it help solve the retirement adequacy challenge?
Workshop
As employers take a more strategic view of their future pension offering, collective defined contribution (CDC) is moving from a niche policy debate to an option that reward and pensions leaders may want to actively consider. With multi-employer CDC schemes expected to be live soon, the question for employers is no longer simply whether to choose a master trust, GPP or trust-based DC arrangement but whether CDC should be ruled in or out as part of a broader review of pension strategy, adequacy and member outcomes.
This interactive, peer-led workshop will help employers assess whether whole-of-life CDC should be part of future pension strategy, exploring its potential role across accumulation and decumulation and whether it could offer a credible way to improve retirement adequacy and member outcomes.
Key discussion points
- Understanding whole-of-life CDC: What CDC is, how it differs from DB and DC and how it could support members through both saving and retirement income
- Assessing the adequacy opportunity: Whether CDC has the potential to improve retirement outcomes, provide greater income confidence and help address the growing pension adequacy challenge, or deliver more sustainable outcomes without increasing employer costs
- Debunking the myths: The that concerns need to be addressed before it can gain wider traction
- The strategic and practical considerations: What employers need to consider around regulation, governance, communication, provider availability, member understanding and whether CDC should be ruled in or out of future pension strategy
Deconstructing pensions: flexible contribution strategies for real-life financial needs
Deconstructing pensions: flexible contribution strategies for real-life financial needs
Workshop
Join this workshop to debate the practical, regulatory and cultural implications of redirecting a portion of employer pension contributions into workplace ISAs or targeted home-savings plans. We’ll deconstruct the traditional pension model to explore hybrid contribution strategies that address employees’ short and medium term goals without undermining long-term retirement outcomes. The workshop will explore implementation challenges, communications and education tactics and the commercial case - showing how flexible contribution design can boost financial wellbeing, pension adequacy and support recruitment and retention strategies.
Key discussion points
- Balancing flexibility with pension adequacy: Assess whether hybrid contribution options could support short and medium-term needs while protecting long-term retirement outcomes
- Designing the right guardrails: What minimum pension contribution levels, matching rules, eligibility criteria and default structures may be needed to make flexible contribution strategies acceptable and sustainable
- Managing regulatory, tax and governance risk: Key things to consider before introducing workplace ISAs, home-savings routes or alternative contribution models, and how to de-risk pilot designs
- Targeting the right employee cohorts: Understand which groups may benefit most from greater savings flexibility
- Communicating value and measuring impact: Building employee understanding and trust and the metrics that demonstrate impact on engagement, financial wellbeing, retention and the wider reward strategy.
Ensuring default fund strategy is aligned to member outcomes
Ensuring default fund strategy is aligned to member outcomes
Workshop
Join this interactive, peer-led workshop exploring how employers can ensure their default investment strategy is genuinely delivering better member outcomes, not simply strong investment returns. Through practical discussion and shared experience, attendees will examine how to assess whether current default arrangements remain fit for purpose, define success measures that reflect long-term retirement outcomes, and decide when changing strategy is justified as workforce demographics, retirement patterns and member needs continue to evolve.
Key discussion points
- Review default investment design and performance frameworks
- Define KPIs linked to investment outcomes, not just returns
- Deciding when to review or change default fund strategy
- Structuring default investment approaches to reflect evolving workforce and decumulation needs
Retirement innovation: Shaping better outcomes for tomorrow's retirees
Retirement innovation: Shaping better outcomes for tomorrow's retirees
Workshop
As retirement becomes more complex and less predictable, join this workshop to explore how Targeted Support, Guided Income and digital innovation can work together to create clearer, more supportive retirement journeys. Drawing on L&G’s experience and early member insights, the workshop will consider how employers can balance engagement, regulatory requirements and scalable delivery while preparing for changing default solutions and evolving member needs.
Key discussion points
- Targeted Support in practice: What Targeted Support is - and is not - where the regulatory boundaries sit and what L&G has learned from its initial use cases and work with the FCA
- Designing more supportive retirement pathways: How Guided Income, workplace solutions and future default approaches could help members navigate complex retirement choices with greater confidence
- Beyond one-size-fits-all support: How Targeted support might also be used at midlife and with younger cohorts
- Using tech, data and AI responsibly: Using digital tools and behavioural insight to personalise and improve engagement and decision-making
Navigating decumulation: Reimagining post-retirement outcomes beyond traditional DC
Navigating decumulation: Reimagining post-retirement outcomes beyond traditional DC
Workshop
With pensions reform accelerating and increasing focus on retirement adequacy and member outcomes, this interactive workshop will explore whether CDC decumulation and guided retirement solutions offer better outcomes for members. We’ll explore what employers need to understand before deciding if these emerging approaches are right for their workforce, governance model and long-term pensions strategy. Through peer-level discussion, attendees will explore the opportunities, concerns and decision-making challenges shaping the future of post-retirement provision.
Key discussion points
- CDC decumulation: What it is and why it matters - understanding the employer case for change
- Guided retirement innovation – how employers are assessing emerging solutions, increasing member support and what this shift means in practice for employers
- Choosing the right post-retirement model for your workforce
- From regulation to rollout: what employers need to do now ahead of the 2027/2028 deadlines
Unlocking strategic value from your DC pension provider
Unlocking strategic value from your DC pension provider
Workshop
Many employers struggle to assess whether they are getting real value from their DC pension provider because it is not always clear what good looks like. This interactive, peer-level workshop will challenge reward, benefits and pensions leaders to rethink the provider relationship, moving beyond administration and compliance to focus on value, insight, accountability and member outcomes.
With increasing pressure to demonstrate return on pension spend and improve retirement readiness, the session will explore how employers can unlock more strategic value from their provider partnerships. Attendees will examine what should be in the provider toolkit, the data and insight they should expect and how these can be used to inform wider reward, benefits and workforce strategies.
Key discussion points
- Defining what good looks like: Benchmark provider value, identify blind spots and clarify where employer and provider responsibilities sit across administration, communications, data, compliance and member outcomes
- Getting the right data and insight: What employers should expect from providers on retirement readiness, contribution adequacy, engagement, at-risk cohorts and the quality, accessibility and usability of pension data
- Understanding the AI and sentiment opportunity: How AI-enabled tools, member interactions and conversational data could create new insight into employee needs, behaviours and concerns and how employers can use this responsibly
- Redefining the employer-provider partnership: Moving from a transactional service relationship to a more strategic partnership, including the questions employers should ask to assess provider capability, innovation and accountability
- Connecting pensions to wider reward and workforce strategy: Using pension insight to inform financial wellbeing, retention, attraction, workforce planning and retirement risk and helping position pensions as part of a joined-up benefits ecosystem
- Turning insight into action: Practical steps employers can take in the next 90 days to test provider capability, improve data conversations and unlock more value from their DC pension arrangements
Speakers
Master trusts: Balancing scale, simplicity, and control
Master trusts: Balancing scale, simplicity, and control
Workshop
The pensions landscape will undergo a fundamental shift, driven by the incoming Value for Money frameworks, future scoring mechanisms, and regulatory pressure for scale. Understanding how to evaluate and leverage a mastertrust will become a critical strategic imperative. Employers need to act now to ensure their scheme is fit for future expectations, managing underlying complexity while delivering true simplicity, transparency, and value for employees.
Discussion points:
- Translating scale into genuine value: Why size alone isn't enough, and how to challenge providers on how they actively utilise scale across investment strategies, fee structures, and proposition innovation to deliver better outcomes.
- Optimising the default for all, not the few: How to strip away the complexity of legacy funds and evaluate default funds optimised for the entire membership
- Controlling assets: how to navigate higher-performing assets without higher costs within default frameworks.
- Governance transparency: understanding how the strength of the trustee board, governance followed and transparency-to-member will become paramount as value for money framework is integrated in the coming years.
- Shifting responsible investment: what greater scale and control will mean for ESG investing
Speakers
Driving employee engagement to solve the pension adequacy gap
Driving employee engagement to solve the pension adequacy gap
Workshop
As low pension engagement and under-saving continue to threaten retirement outcomes, employers have a critical role to play in helping employees understand, value and act on their workplace pension. This discussion-based workshop will explore how we better support savings behaviour, improve financial resilience and help employees retire at the right time with greater confidence.
Sharing key findings from Royal London’s latest employee and employer research, the session will examine what employees are worried about, what support they need across short and long-term savings and how employers can create clearer, more relevant engagement strategies.
Key discussion points
- Understanding the adequacy challenge: What the latest research reveals about employee behaviour, savings concerns and the risk that low engagement could lead to poorer retirement outcomes and an ageing workforce.
- Compulsion versus engagement: Balancing regulatory or contribution-based interventions with more effective engagement strategies that encourage employees to take action
- Driving better outcomes: Designing communications and support that enable employees to understand their options, helping to connect pension saving to wider financial resilience. Best practice, case studies and new approaches including targeted messaging and proposition design
Speakers
Closing the gap: Practical employer actions to improve women’s retirement outcomes
Closing the gap: Practical employer actions to improve women’s retirement outcomes
Workshop
The gender pension gap starts long before retirement, it shows up years earlier in the workplace. If we want better retirement outcomes for women, this is where we need to start. Drawing on latest research from the Scottish Widows, Women in Retirement report, this hand-on, peer-led workshop will explore the drivers behind women’s poorer retirement outcomes and why key life moments such as career breaks, caring responsibilities, divorce, health and family leave can have such a lasting impact on pension adequacy. Focused on moving from insight to action, the session will help reward and benefits leaders identify where they can make a practical difference now, while also considering the longer-term role of policy, governance, auto-enrolment reform and targeted support.
Key discussion points
- Understanding the scale and drivers of the gap: What the latest research reveals about women’s retirement outcomes, the impact of career breaks and caring responsibilities and why this needs to be treated as a strategic workforce issue
- Supporting women at key life moments: How employers can provide better guidance, conversations and targeted support around parental leave, caring, divorce, health-related absence and other moments that can materially affect pension outcomes
- Benefit design, policy and quick wins: The low-cost changes to leave, pay, and contribution policies that would most quickly improve women’s pension outcomes
- Benchmarking, governance and employer action: How employers can understand where they are today, track progress, learn from peers and identify the practical commitments they can make over the next six months to start closing the gap
The next era of retirement support: Designing AI and hybrid guidance to help people make better retirement decisions
The next era of retirement support: Designing AI and hybrid guidance to help people make better retirement decisions
Workshop
Many people approach retirement with low confidence and uncertainty about their options. At the same time, employers and providers are exploring how emerging technologies and new forms of support can help more people make informed decisions at scale. This interactive workshop invites participants to take part in a fast-paced mini hackathon, designing a future retirement support experience that combines Targeted Support and human guidance. Working in teams, attendees will tackle a real-world customer challenge, balancing innovation with practical considerations such as customer vulnerability, fairness and explainability. Through collaboration, discussion and friendly competition, participants will explore what effective retirement support could look like in the years ahead.
Key discussion points
- The key barriers that prevent people from engaging with their retirement planning and making confident decisions
- How Targeted Support can help bridge the gap between generic information and personalised advice to suit diverse digital literacy levels and financial capability
- Mapping where AI adds real value (education, nudges) and where human empathy is indispensable
- What does success looks like: Measuring ROI by focusing on member trust, confidence and outcomes
The new employee benefit: why whole-of-life CDC cannot be overlooked
The new employee benefit: why whole-of-life CDC cannot be overlooked
Workshop
As traditional DC models struggle to guarantee retirement adequacy amid economic volatility, Collective Defined Contribution (CDC) schemes are rapidly shifting from a theoretical alternative to a regulatory reality. Senior pensions and benefits practitioners face a critical window to understand this landscape before it redefines competitive talent retention. This workshop cuts through the noise to explore how whole-of-life CDC can bridge the gap between predictable employer costs and secure, pooled employee retirement outcomes Find out why evaluating it today is vital for your long-term benefits strategy.
Discussion themes:
- Blueprint for retirement adequacy: Discover how the pooled investment and longevity risk of CDC models can significantly boost retirement outcomes compared to traditional individual DC pots
- Strategic business case: Understand why leading employers are actively exploring CDC to enhance their employee value proposition and manage corporate risk
- Fact vs fiction: Separate the myths from the realities of CDC implementation, addressing regulatory hurdles, communications challenges, and operational truths
- Actionable next steps: Gain clarity on how to assess if a whole-of-life CDC model aligns with your workforce demographics and broader corporate benefit objectives.
Speakers
The growing need for retirement guidance; closing the confidence gap
The growing need for retirement guidance; closing the confidence gap
Workshop
A quiet crisis is unfolding at the end of the career lifecycle: 39% of employees aged 55 and over have no clear retirement income goal, while 40% have already delayed their retirement. This can have implications not only for individual retirement outcomes, but also for workforce planning and financial wellbeing.
With 28% actively seeking support to set retirement income goals and only 27% taking steps to look at what they might have at retirement, employers can no longer rely on passive communication alone. Attending this workshop will equip you to bridge this gap, improve retirement readiness, and support better outcomes for your workforce and organisation.
Key takeaways:
- Diagnose the root causes of pension inertia: uncover why many employees hit a decision-making wall as they near retirement and how to remove systemic barriers to engagement
- Implement targeted financial education and guidance: design scalable, impactful support frameworks that empower staff to make informed retirement choices without increasing institutional risk
- Measure good outcomes: establish clear KPIs and metrics to evaluate ROI on initiatives, and support effective workforce planning.
REBA Future of Pensions Research: what the results tell us about what employers need to do next
REBA Future of Pensions Research: what the results tell us about what employers need to do next
Spotlight talk
Huge sweeping changes are coming into pensions, spurred on primarily by incoming legislation and regulations. Behind this lies the ageing of the population, longer working lives plus the cost of living – meaning the way we do things has to change, including pensions savings.
This research report, launched at the Summit, will show what proportion of employers are prioritising challenges ranging from pensions savings gaps, employee financial decisions, and default investment fund performance, through to contribution levels, pension scheme governance and decumulation choices. The research will help delegates see how other employers are reacting in the face of new legislation and regulations, allowing them to sense check their own actions.
Speakers
Preparing for 2029: Pensions salary sacrifice and practical readiness
Preparing for 2029: Pensions salary sacrifice and practical readiness
Spotlight talk
With potential changes to pensions salary sacrifice on the horizon from 2029, employers need to act now to understand the impact on cost, contribution design, employee take-home pay and pensions saving behaviour. Delivered by a leading tax expert, the session will outline how reward and pensions leaders can audit exposure, model different scenarios, review alternative contribution structures, rethink communication strategies and build the governance and contingency planning needed to prepare with confidence and manage future risk.
Speakers
The future of master trusts: What TPR and employers can expect and demand
The future of master trusts: What TPR and employers can expect and demand
Spotlight talk
As the workplace pension landscape consolidates and evolves, this session will outline TPR’s evolving expectations for master trusts and what this means for pensions governance. Delving into how Value for Money will be rigorously assessed moving forward, moving the conversation past cost-as-a-proxy to focus on fewer, larger schemes, robust investment oversight and scheme governance, all leading towards tangibly improved member outcomes.
Alyshia will highlight the biggest strategic opportunities and challenges facing DC members today and will explore what employers should expect, and demand, from their pension provider to ensure their scheme remains resilient, compliant and optimised for their workforce.
Speakers
Spotlight Q&A
12.50pm – 1.15pm
Pre-lunch quiz - Networking table exercise
Designing effective partnerships between employers, advisers and providers
Designing effective partnerships between employers, advisers and providers
Workshop
As DC pensions become increasingly important to reward strategies, financial wellbeing programmes and member outcomes, employers are navigating a growing network of providers, advisers and internal stakeholders.
This interactive workshop will explore what effective partnership looks like in practice, considering how organisations can maximise the value of their pension arrangements, strengthen collaboration and support better outcomes for members.
Through discussion and shared experiences, attendees will have the opportunity to consider:
- The evolving roles of employers, advisers and providers
- What successful pension partnerships look like across different scheme structures
- Ways to improve collaboration, governance and decision-making
- How employers can build momentum and deliver meaningful outcomes beyond formal governance meetings
- Approaches to measuring success and demonstrating value
This session is designed to encourage discussion, share practical perspectives and explore opportunities to strengthen partnership working across the pensions ecosystem.
Make every message count: Making pension communications accessible and inclusive
Make every message count: Making pension communications accessible and inclusive
Workshop
Employers are under increasing pressure to ensure their pension offering is not only understood, but genuinely accessible and effective for a diverse workforce, including frontline, low literacy, neurodivergent and other often unseen vulnerable groups. Join this workshop to explore how organisations can move beyond one-size-fits-all communication approaches to design more inclusive, data-led engagement strategies. Drawing on insights from pensions administration and member interactions at scale together, this action-driven session will examine how accessibility, vulnerability and behavioural needs should shape communication design and how this links to broader regulatory developments such as targeted support and outcomes-focused pensions policy.
Key discussion points
- Understanding your workforce beyond demographics: Identifying and segmenting at-risk and unseen vulnerable cohorts
- Behavioural principles that drive better pensions decisions: Understanding what actually drives member action and why traditional messaging often fails
- Designing for accessibility and inclusion: Practical checks for written, visual and face-to-face communications to ensure clarity, usability and relevance across different needs and capabilities
- Blending communications with targeted support and measurement: What emerging expectations mean for how employers communicate and support pension decisions and what this looks like in practice
Speakers
Integrating pensions, savings and financial goals at every life stage
Integrating pensions, savings and financial goals at every life stage
Workshop
Join this practical and interactive workshop exploring how employers can better connect pensions with ISAs, short-term savings and housing goals to support employees’ financial decisions across different life stages. We’ll examine how to understand employee priorities, frame competing financial choices, design more joined-up savings programmes and measure whether interventions are improving engagement, confidence and outcomes.
Key discussion points
- Measuring engagement and behaviour change: What good looks like when assessing financial wellbeing engagement, savings behaviour and the impact of employer-led interventions.
- Connecting pensions, ISAs, savings and housing goals: Helping employees understand the trade-offs and connections between short, medium and long-term savings priorities, from building emergency savings to saving for a home or increasing pension contributions.
- Designing programmes around real employee priorities: Using workforce insight to shape benefits design, including flexible contributions, workplace ISAs, payroll savings, savings buckets and targeted communications around key life moments.
- Simplifying financial decision-making: Creating clearer journeys, communications and nudges that make it easier for employees to take action, improve take-up and reduce complexity for both employees and benefits teams.
- Building the business case: Evaluating the cost, value and impact of integrated financial wellbeing programmes using engagement, wellbeing, retention and savings outcomes.
Closing the pensions value gap: making investment visible and meaningful
Closing the pensions value gap: making investment visible and meaningful
Workshop
With regulatory focus surrounding Value for Money frameworks intensifying, pensions practitioners are under pressure to demonstrate concrete ROI on pension spend. Yet pension risk is ultimately people risk. Failing to deliver clear value and guide members on the path to good outcomes, leads directly to reduced productivity, workforce retention issues, regulatory scrutiny, and costly operational fixes. This workshop will provide the timely framework employers need to look at beyond raw cost in order to quantify true scheme value to them and their people.
Key discussion points
- Diagnose the disconnect between cost and perceived value: Move past low-cost default traps to evaluate how investment returns, member engagement, and guidance directly drive better long-term financial outcomes
- Mitigate hidden people and business risks: Understand why proactive scheme optimisation and KPIs are vastly more cost-effective than fixing compliance failures, reputational damage, or employee disengagement in the future
- Build a compelling value narrative for the C-suite: Master the cross-over language between HR and finance to demonstrate clear return on investment and strategic return on value to both HRDs and FDs
- Quantify and measure impact: Go beyond hard investment performance metrics to measure true member retirement readiness and its direct impact on workplace productivity and workforce strategy
Whole-of-life CDC: could it help solve the retirement adequacy challenge?
Whole-of-life CDC: could it help solve the retirement adequacy challenge?
Workshop
As employers take a more strategic view of their future pension offering, collective defined contribution (CDC) is moving from a niche policy debate to an option that reward and pensions leaders may want to actively consider. With multi-employer CDC schemes expected to be live soon, the question for employers is no longer simply whether to choose a master trust, GPP or trust-based DC arrangement but whether CDC should be ruled in or out as part of a broader review of pension strategy, adequacy and member outcomes.
This interactive, peer-led workshop will help employers assess whether whole-of-life CDC should be part of future pension strategy, exploring its potential role across accumulation and decumulation and whether it could offer a credible way to improve retirement adequacy and member outcomes.
Key discussion points
- Understanding whole-of-life CDC: What CDC is, how it differs from DB and DC and how it could support members through both saving and retirement income
- Assessing the adequacy opportunity: Whether CDC has the potential to improve retirement outcomes, provide greater income confidence and help address the growing pension adequacy challenge, or deliver more sustainable outcomes without increasing employer costs
- Debunking the myths: The that concerns need to be addressed before it can gain wider traction
- The strategic and practical considerations: What employers need to consider around regulation, governance, communication, provider availability, member understanding and whether CDC should be ruled in or out of future pension strategy
Deconstructing pensions: flexible contribution strategies for real-life financial needs
Deconstructing pensions: flexible contribution strategies for real-life financial needs
Workshop
Join this workshop to debate the practical, regulatory and cultural implications of redirecting a portion of employer pension contributions into workplace ISAs or targeted home-savings plans. We’ll deconstruct the traditional pension model to explore hybrid contribution strategies that address employees’ short and medium term goals without undermining long-term retirement outcomes. The workshop will explore implementation challenges, communications and education tactics and the commercial case - showing how flexible contribution design can boost financial wellbeing, pension adequacy and support recruitment and retention strategies.
Key discussion points
- Balancing flexibility with pension adequacy: Assess whether hybrid contribution options could support short and medium-term needs while protecting long-term retirement outcomes
- Designing the right guardrails: What minimum pension contribution levels, matching rules, eligibility criteria and default structures may be needed to make flexible contribution strategies acceptable and sustainable
- Managing regulatory, tax and governance risk: Key things to consider before introducing workplace ISAs, home-savings routes or alternative contribution models, and how to de-risk pilot designs
- Targeting the right employee cohorts: Understand which groups may benefit most from greater savings flexibility
- Communicating value and measuring impact: Building employee understanding and trust and the metrics that demonstrate impact on engagement, financial wellbeing, retention and the wider reward strategy.
Ensuring default fund strategy is aligned to member outcomes
Ensuring default fund strategy is aligned to member outcomes
Workshop
Join this interactive, peer-led workshop exploring how employers can ensure their default investment strategy is genuinely delivering better member outcomes, not simply strong investment returns. Through practical discussion and shared experience, attendees will examine how to assess whether current default arrangements remain fit for purpose, define success measures that reflect long-term retirement outcomes, and decide when changing strategy is justified as workforce demographics, retirement patterns and member needs continue to evolve.
Key discussion points
- Review default investment design and performance frameworks
- Define KPIs linked to investment outcomes, not just returns
- Deciding when to review or change default fund strategy
- Structuring default investment approaches to reflect evolving workforce and decumulation needs
Retirement innovation: Shaping better outcomes for tomorrow's retirees
Retirement innovation: Shaping better outcomes for tomorrow's retirees
Workshop
As retirement becomes more complex and less predictable, join this workshop to explore how Targeted Support, Guided Income and digital innovation can work together to create clearer, more supportive retirement journeys. Drawing on L&G’s experience and early member insights, the workshop will consider how employers can balance engagement, regulatory requirements and scalable delivery while preparing for changing default solutions and evolving member needs.
Key discussion points
- Targeted Support in practice: What Targeted Support is - and is not - where the regulatory boundaries sit and what L&G has learned from its initial use cases and work with the FCA
- Designing more supportive retirement pathways: How Guided Income, workplace solutions and future default approaches could help members navigate complex retirement choices with greater confidence
- Beyond one-size-fits-all support: How Targeted support might also be used at midlife and with younger cohorts
- Using tech, data and AI responsibly: Using digital tools and behavioural insight to personalise and improve engagement and decision-making
Navigating decumulation: Reimagining post-retirement outcomes beyond traditional DC
Navigating decumulation: Reimagining post-retirement outcomes beyond traditional DC
Workshop
With pensions reform accelerating and increasing focus on retirement adequacy and member outcomes, this interactive workshop will explore whether CDC decumulation and guided retirement solutions offer better outcomes for members. We’ll explore what employers need to understand before deciding if these emerging approaches are right for their workforce, governance model and long-term pensions strategy. Through peer-level discussion, attendees will explore the opportunities, concerns and decision-making challenges shaping the future of post-retirement provision.
Key discussion points
- CDC decumulation: What it is and why it matters - understanding the employer case for change
- Guided retirement innovation – how employers are assessing emerging solutions, increasing member support and what this shift means in practice for employers
- Choosing the right post-retirement model for your workforce
- From regulation to rollout: what employers need to do now ahead of the 2027/2028 deadlines
Unlocking strategic value from your DC pension provider
Unlocking strategic value from your DC pension provider
Workshop
Many employers struggle to assess whether they are getting real value from their DC pension provider because it is not always clear what good looks like. This interactive, peer-level workshop will challenge reward, benefits and pensions leaders to rethink the provider relationship, moving beyond administration and compliance to focus on value, insight, accountability and member outcomes.
With increasing pressure to demonstrate return on pension spend and improve retirement readiness, the session will explore how employers can unlock more strategic value from their provider partnerships. Attendees will examine what should be in the provider toolkit, the data and insight they should expect and how these can be used to inform wider reward, benefits and workforce strategies.
Key discussion points
- Defining what good looks like: Benchmark provider value, identify blind spots and clarify where employer and provider responsibilities sit across administration, communications, data, compliance and member outcomes
- Getting the right data and insight: What employers should expect from providers on retirement readiness, contribution adequacy, engagement, at-risk cohorts and the quality, accessibility and usability of pension data
- Understanding the AI and sentiment opportunity: How AI-enabled tools, member interactions and conversational data could create new insight into employee needs, behaviours and concerns and how employers can use this responsibly
- Redefining the employer-provider partnership: Moving from a transactional service relationship to a more strategic partnership, including the questions employers should ask to assess provider capability, innovation and accountability
- Connecting pensions to wider reward and workforce strategy: Using pension insight to inform financial wellbeing, retention, attraction, workforce planning and retirement risk and helping position pensions as part of a joined-up benefits ecosystem
- Turning insight into action: Practical steps employers can take in the next 90 days to test provider capability, improve data conversations and unlock more value from their DC pension arrangements
Speakers
Master trusts: Balancing scale, simplicity, and control
Master trusts: Balancing scale, simplicity, and control
Workshop
The pensions landscape will undergo a fundamental shift, driven by the incoming Value for Money frameworks, future scoring mechanisms, and regulatory pressure for scale. Understanding how to evaluate and leverage a mastertrust will become a critical strategic imperative. Employers need to act now to ensure their scheme is fit for future expectations, managing underlying complexity while delivering true simplicity, transparency, and value for employees.
Discussion points:
- Translating scale into genuine value: Why size alone isn't enough, and how to challenge providers on how they actively utilise scale across investment strategies, fee structures, and proposition innovation to deliver better outcomes.
- Optimising the default for all, not the few: How to strip away the complexity of legacy funds and evaluate default funds optimised for the entire membership
- Controlling assets: how to navigate higher-performing assets without higher costs within default frameworks.
- Governance transparency: understanding how the strength of the trustee board, governance followed and transparency-to-member will become paramount as value for money framework is integrated in the coming years.
- Shifting responsible investment: what greater scale and control will mean for ESG investing
Speakers
Driving employee engagement to solve the pension adequacy gap
Driving employee engagement to solve the pension adequacy gap
Workshop
As low pension engagement and under-saving continue to threaten retirement outcomes, employers have a critical role to play in helping employees understand, value and act on their workplace pension. This discussion-based workshop will explore how we better support savings behaviour, improve financial resilience and help employees retire at the right time with greater confidence.
Sharing key findings from Royal London’s latest employee and employer research, the session will examine what employees are worried about, what support they need across short and long-term savings and how employers can create clearer, more relevant engagement strategies.
Key discussion points
- Understanding the adequacy challenge: What the latest research reveals about employee behaviour, savings concerns and the risk that low engagement could lead to poorer retirement outcomes and an ageing workforce.
- Compulsion versus engagement: Balancing regulatory or contribution-based interventions with more effective engagement strategies that encourage employees to take action
- Driving better outcomes: Designing communications and support that enable employees to understand their options, helping to connect pension saving to wider financial resilience. Best practice, case studies and new approaches including targeted messaging and proposition design
Speakers
Closing the gap: Practical employer actions to improve women’s retirement outcomes
Closing the gap: Practical employer actions to improve women’s retirement outcomes
Workshop
The gender pension gap starts long before retirement, it shows up years earlier in the workplace. If we want better retirement outcomes for women, this is where we need to start. Drawing on latest research from the Scottish Widows, Women in Retirement report, this hand-on, peer-led workshop will explore the drivers behind women’s poorer retirement outcomes and why key life moments such as career breaks, caring responsibilities, divorce, health and family leave can have such a lasting impact on pension adequacy. Focused on moving from insight to action, the session will help reward and benefits leaders identify where they can make a practical difference now, while also considering the longer-term role of policy, governance, auto-enrolment reform and targeted support.
Key discussion points
- Understanding the scale and drivers of the gap: What the latest research reveals about women’s retirement outcomes, the impact of career breaks and caring responsibilities and why this needs to be treated as a strategic workforce issue
- Supporting women at key life moments: How employers can provide better guidance, conversations and targeted support around parental leave, caring, divorce, health-related absence and other moments that can materially affect pension outcomes
- Benefit design, policy and quick wins: The low-cost changes to leave, pay, and contribution policies that would most quickly improve women’s pension outcomes
- Benchmarking, governance and employer action: How employers can understand where they are today, track progress, learn from peers and identify the practical commitments they can make over the next six months to start closing the gap
The next era of retirement support: Designing AI and hybrid guidance to help people make better retirement decisions
The next era of retirement support: Designing AI and hybrid guidance to help people make better retirement decisions
Workshop
Many people approach retirement with low confidence and uncertainty about their options. At the same time, employers and providers are exploring how emerging technologies and new forms of support can help more people make informed decisions at scale. This interactive workshop invites participants to take part in a fast-paced mini hackathon, designing a future retirement support experience that combines Targeted Support and human guidance. Working in teams, attendees will tackle a real-world customer challenge, balancing innovation with practical considerations such as customer vulnerability, fairness and explainability. Through collaboration, discussion and friendly competition, participants will explore what effective retirement support could look like in the years ahead.
Key discussion points
- The key barriers that prevent people from engaging with their retirement planning and making confident decisions
- How Targeted Support can help bridge the gap between generic information and personalised advice to suit diverse digital literacy levels and financial capability
- Mapping where AI adds real value (education, nudges) and where human empathy is indispensable
- What does success looks like: Measuring ROI by focusing on member trust, confidence and outcomes
The new employee benefit: why whole-of-life CDC cannot be overlooked
The new employee benefit: why whole-of-life CDC cannot be overlooked
Workshop
As traditional DC models struggle to guarantee retirement adequacy amid economic volatility, Collective Defined Contribution (CDC) schemes are rapidly shifting from a theoretical alternative to a regulatory reality. Senior pensions and benefits practitioners face a critical window to understand this landscape before it redefines competitive talent retention. This workshop cuts through the noise to explore how whole-of-life CDC can bridge the gap between predictable employer costs and secure, pooled employee retirement outcomes Find out why evaluating it today is vital for your long-term benefits strategy.
Discussion themes:
- Blueprint for retirement adequacy: Discover how the pooled investment and longevity risk of CDC models can significantly boost retirement outcomes compared to traditional individual DC pots
- Strategic business case: Understand why leading employers are actively exploring CDC to enhance their employee value proposition and manage corporate risk
- Fact vs fiction: Separate the myths from the realities of CDC implementation, addressing regulatory hurdles, communications challenges, and operational truths
- Actionable next steps: Gain clarity on how to assess if a whole-of-life CDC model aligns with your workforce demographics and broader corporate benefit objectives.
Speakers
The growing need for retirement guidance; closing the confidence gap
The growing need for retirement guidance; closing the confidence gap
Workshop
A quiet crisis is unfolding at the end of the career lifecycle: 39% of employees aged 55 and over have no clear retirement income goal, while 40% have already delayed their retirement. This can have implications not only for individual retirement outcomes, but also for workforce planning and financial wellbeing.
With 28% actively seeking support to set retirement income goals and only 27% taking steps to look at what they might have at retirement, employers can no longer rely on passive communication alone. Attending this workshop will equip you to bridge this gap, improve retirement readiness, and support better outcomes for your workforce and organisation.
Key takeaways:
- Diagnose the root causes of pension inertia: uncover why many employees hit a decision-making wall as they near retirement and how to remove systemic barriers to engagement
- Implement targeted financial education and guidance: design scalable, impactful support frameworks that empower staff to make informed retirement choices without increasing institutional risk
- Measure good outcomes: establish clear KPIs and metrics to evaluate ROI on initiatives, and support effective workforce planning.
Why pension investment should matter to employers
How the Crown Estate is working with independent trustees to drive pension value and improve member outcomes
How Bain Capital has shifted pension education from age to earnings
How Bain Capital has shifted pension education from age to earnings
Employer case studies
Bain Capital has redesigned pension education around employees’ earnings, contributions structures and wider wealth profiles – rather than by age - creating more relevant messages, clearer actions and measurable behaviour change.Speakers
