Eighteen months after closing our final salary scheme: what I would do differently

I would add: train line managers before members hear anything. Ours found out at the same time as their teams and could not answer the simplest question, which made it look as if the company was hiding something. A 45-minute briefing a week earlier would have cost nothing.

Slightly different view. We did the individual projections and they caused their own trouble, because people treated the projected figure as a promise. Two years later markets were down and we had complaints quoting the illustration back at us. I would still do them, but with a range rather than a single number, and with the low end shown as prominently as the middle.

Good point on ranges, and I wish we had done that. On managers, agreed entirely. We also underestimated how many members near retirement wanted a conversation with a person. We eventually funded one session each with an independent adviser for anyone within ten years of retirement age, about 210 people, and take-up was 64%.