Jonathan Smart FIA

Jonathan advises trustees and sponsors of defined benefit (DB) pension schemes, providing strategic actuarial and consultancy advice on a wide variety of issues as they move towards buyout or towards running off their schemes.

Jonathan leads the client relationships for his own portfolio of clients, covering all the Trustee services that Barnett Waddingham provides. As an experienced Scheme Actuary, Jonathan enables his clients to understand, effectively manage and monitor their pension scheme risks as they target meeting member benefits in full. He has strong, effective and longstanding relationships with his clients, delivering tailored advice appropriate to each trustee board and assisting them in navigating change in the pensions landscape.

Jonathan has wide experience of working with a varied range of UK businesses, overseas parent companies and their DB schemes, having advised pension schemes ranging in size from £10 million to £1 billion.

Significant experience:

• Scheme Actuary advice regarding integrated funding and investment strategies alongside setting and monitoring journey plans towards an ultimate goal of buyout.
• Supporting trustees in funding negotiations with their sponsoring employer and in mitigating employer covenant risk, including use of escrow accounts and Flexible Apportionment Arrangements.
• Supporting mature pension schemes with buy-ins, including working with the trustees, Barnett Waddingham’s risk transfer team and other advisers, providing advice regarding assessment of feasibility, reviewing data and benefits, liaising with insurer, completing buy-in and data cleansing.
• Advising on terms for actuarial factors and calculation of benefits.
• Guaranteed Minimum Pension (GMP) equalisation.
• Short term secondment as in-house UK pensions manager at a global professional services company dealing with defined benefit and defined contribution arrangements.
• Advice on UK and international accounting disclosures to employers.
• Advice on wider pension scheme matters, including closure to new members, retirement communication exercises, PPF levy mitigation, governance arrangements and keeping trustees abreast of current pensions issues.