The IGC which assesses Scottish Widows has published its Annual Report.

The Independent Governance Committee (IGC) which assesses the value for money available to customers saving for retirement through a Group Personal Pension Scheme, Group Stakeholder Pension Scheme or Group SIPP managed by Scottish Widows, has published its annual report.

If you are a customer saving for your retirement through one of these arrangements, an employer using one of these arrangements to provide a pension scheme to your workforce or a professional adviser supporting employers or individual employees, this report should be of value and interest to you.

It's probably worth me first setting out where an IGC features in the Governance of your pension scheme.

Traditional occupational pensions are managed by a Trustee Board who are responsible for the performance of the scheme and for scheme member outcomes. Master Trusts work in a similar way where the Master Trust Board does this for a number of employers. For Group Personal Pension Schemes, Group Stakeholder Pension Schemes and Group SIPPs, it is the Board of the Insurance Company who has responsibility for managing the scheme, for the performance of the scheme and for scheme member outcomes.

NB: Nowadays, insurers often use the term 'customer' instead of 'member', although some mutual insurers still tend to use the term 'member'.

In practice the Insurance Company Board will delegate the day to day running of the organisation to the Executive Management Committee, and in the case of Scottish Widows there are then several specialist sub committees, including a Risk Committee, an Investment Committee and a Customer Committee as examples. Executive sub committees are overseen by sub committees of The Board.

An Independent Governance Committee is a group of external experts who sit separately and independently to those who are responsible for the management and performance of the schemes, and who are tasked to challenge those running the schemes, to provide the best possible value to members. In short an IGC is there to represent the interests of the scheme members and to challenge those running the scheme to do the best job possible.

In carrying out their duties an IGC should seek the views of scheme members, in terms of what is important to them. They should assess the value being offered across a range of criteria including charges, investment returns, administration, support for customers with decisions to make (engagement), nudges to customers to do the right thing at the right time (engagement) and areas like data privacy and cyber security (governance).

IGCs will consider other alternative arrangements available in the market in determining whether customers are getting the best possible value from their pension provider.

Over the course of the year, the IGC will gather a range of evidence and draw conclusions. Where an IGC feels that a provider needs to raise its game, it will challenge the provider to do so.

Each year the Chair of the IGC will issue an annual report, where it assesses the work being done by those responsible for the management and performance of the scheme and share its findings with the scheme members. In this report the IGC will also share the challenges given to the pension provider on behalf of the scheme members whose interests it represents, and how the pension provider responded to those challenges.

This year's report can be found here, and historic reports can be found alongside. I'm not a member of the IGC and cannot respond to comments in relation to the content of the report. There is an IGC Mailbox signposted through the report, through which questions and comments can be posted to the IGC directly.

I hope the signposting and context is useful.