Well, good morning, everybody and welcome to today's webinar, an update on the TPT benefit review including implications for the 2025 accounting year end. My name is Richard Solden and I head up LCP's not-for-profit team and I'm joined today by my colleague Mike Richardson, who is head of our social housing team. We, we were hoped that we'd be joined by Helen Collins from the National Housing Federation. Unfortunately, Helen has had some technical challenges so they won't be able to join us, which is a shame because we, we have a close working relationship with the National Housing Federation and, and her support was, was something we, we very much appreciated. Before we, we start, I'll, I'll just give a bit of a talk through what you can see on the screen in front of you on the console. You should be able to see the, the slides and me and Mike, hopefully from your perspective where small cameras in the corner and the slides are more obvious. You'll also be able to see our BIOS and contact details on the console so that you can follow up with any questions afterwards. Subtitles or closed captioning is available. You you need to click CC in the media player to enable the the captions and, and I understand that blue means it's on captions work on a live basis so they're not always as accurate as they might be, but hopefully they are helpful. There is also a resources list where you can find relevant materials, including a blog on the the the benefit review and some links to previous webinars. This is being recorded and a recording will be emailed to you later this week. So do watch out for that and you'll be able to watch on demand and share with with your colleagues. Importantly, you should be able to find AQ and a box on the console where you can enter questions as as they occur to you during the session. Anything that you type will only be things that we can see. We will be keeping an eye on the questions and pick those up at the end and if there are too many then we'll aim to follow up afterwards. If you have any technical challenges then do also feed those into the Q&A box and and colleagues will will try and deal with them for you. You can tailor the screen to suit you by moving the various windows around and changing the sizes. And finally, you you can should be able to see a link to sign up for some further round table discussion sessions that we are planning to host once we know the outcome of the the TPT benefit review. And please do indicate if you can attend one or both of those dates and, and, and hold them in the, in your Diaries, if you, if you'd be interested. Now, we, we recognize that this is a, a big issue for housing associations, for charities, for independent schools and, and other not-for-profit organizations. And we've got a, a great range of all of those organizations for support dialing in today, which is great to see. I know there's lots of familiar names, but there's some familiar names to some new names as well. And, and, and that's something that we're, we're we're delighted to see. With that in mind, I will hand over to Mike to take us through the first parts of the TPT benefit review. Excellent. And thanks, Richard. Morning, everybody. So what are we going to talk about today? What are we going to cover? This is I guess the latest part of a long running process. It's been going always four years so far. This a review into the benefits that is provided by TPT culminating in this court case, which is due to be heard in a week's time case will be Verity trustees limited by the trustees of the pensions Trust. So I think it will be the Verity case going forward. What are we going to cover? Well, first we'll go through the background to, to how we got here. What what are the issues that have been considered? Why is it such a big deal? We'll talk, Richard will talk about the potential impact on both members and on schemes and the employers that fund them. And we'll talk about some of the strategic options that it's worth thinking about, starting to think about now as we go ahead. We'll also, I'll then look at accounting, a rather more potentially immediate point and look at a plan for dealing with any impact there. That's what we will cover. I think kind of importantly, what we're not going to cover, what we're not going to to go near is any speculation about what the outcome of the case itself might actually be. That's, that's clearly a legal issue where we're not lawyers. We're not going to comment one way over as to where we think it will go out. We're not, you know, we're not qualified. It's not what we do. I guess the only thing I would say is, you know, I think from what I've seen, I think the, the technical term for this is it's really, really hard. It's obviously not a, a very clear cut decision in any of these cases because we wouldn't be going to court if it was. So I think it's, it's very complex. There is an awful lot of difficulty with all of this. So we're not going to speculate, but what we do think is there is a chance that the outcome could be bad, that we could get the the wrong outcome from everyone's perspective. And then, you know, there are steps that can be taken. And it's worth starting to plan now so that if that outcome happens, you're ready, you're able to take action in good time rather than having to try and think about things further down the line. We've got there's a quote here from from Jack Reacher books by Belly Child, You know, hope for the best, plan for the worst. He tends to use it in a context other than pensions, but I think it is still relevant. I think what we're talking about is having an idea of if the worst happens, what are you going to do? Obviously, we hope that it turns out that's not needed, but if it does, it's much better to have started that thinking process and be ready to act than not. That's what we're going to do. Before we get into it, we've just got a quick question, a poll question. What are your additional, your potential additional liabilities? Hopefully you can select the options on the screen, step one that's kind of best fits you and submit it to get an idea. So going down the options, we've got A which is, is nil. So no potential additional liabilities. It's possibly you're in the wrong webinar if that's the option, but it's that's there. You've got B, which is, you know, less than £1,000,000. You've got C which is between 1:00 and 5:00, you've got D which is more than 5 million and you've got E which is the the don't know option. So the they're not sure if we just give a few more seconds, just let the last of those responses come through. I think getting there we go for that and what we got. Yeah. So it's kind of a fairly balance. Everybody thinks for something or doesn't know and it's it's a range. And I think that ties in with what we see in our understanding. There is a really wide range of exposure. There's some employers where it's potentially fairly minimal. But at the other end, there's certainly somewhere it's could be really significant, really, really significant. And so that's what we see and we'll look at why that might be the case as we go through a bit of background first to TPT, to the pensions trust. What what is it first, first of all, And it's it's a large pension scheme that consists of individual pension schemes under that umbrella. It's part of the same trust. And there's there's over 50 schemes within it. And that includes large multi employer schemes. So schemes that have lots of different employers participating in them like ships, the social housing pension scheme, the independent schools pension scheme, ISP S, the growth plan which many charities participate in. So they're all examples of multi employer schemes. Then there's also a large number of single employer schemes or single employer group schemes. That's just where there's one employer associated with it. The the chart on the screen shows how the scheme itself breaks down into those different component schemes. The size of each tile is based on the assets of that scheme. So you can see that the the biggest individual scheme is on the left hand side is is ships assets of about 2 1/2 billion pounds. The the grey boxes represent the seven multi employer schemes and they're probably about 60% of the total size. The the gold represents the single employers and they're about 40%. You can see there's so many different schemes there, so many different employers making changes at different times in different ways. And that's part of the reason why this, the outcome, this potential impact of it is so variable and so uncertain because it will affect lots of different employers in different ways. So we're saying that this is only the defined benefit assets of the scheme. The defined contribution assets are separate. They're not included here. So what in terms of timeline, how we've got here, as I say, this starts go back to 2021 when TPT wrote to many employers to say that they'd identified a potential issue with the way pension. Some changes had been made to the scheme in the past, meant that the changes may not be as effective, may not have been implemented as intended. They'd been advised that there was sufficient ambiguity there that they should go to court to get a ruling as to how that, you know, how the scheme should be run going forward, as to what the benefits were. That led to a lot of, you know, work analyzing, identifying the different issues, the different changes that were potentially in scope, analyzing them, preparing the issues for the court to consider and all the paperwork back in papers. That's been the last four years. We're now in this middle box, which is, you know, the court date scheduled for a week's time, scheduled to be heard for 28 days, which I think is, you know, in the context of these kind of cases is a staggeringly long time. This is a really large, really complex case. And then going forward, we said ruling might be known in the summer, but we've put back an inverted commas. I think we don't really know. It's depends on when the court is able to reach a decision having analyzed these huge amounts of information that they're going to be provided with. Yeah, it could be June, it could be November, it's could be, probably will be somewhere between the two. But when we have that, you know, we can start to consider the funding and investment implications, if any. It may be there needs to be follow up questions for the course as well to get more clarity in certain areas. But as a result, you're going forward to the extent the changes are needed, we would expect that then to start to feed through to contributions that employers are paying in 2026 and then the benefits may start to be updated 2026 and onwards. So that's kind of the timeline as to where we are in terms of the issues, in terms of the questions that are being asked. Well, originally there were kind of three key classes of issues identified. The first was the the measure of inflation that should be used for pension increases. So pensions increase in payment. Originally they were based, those increases were based on changes to RPI to retail prices and then 2003 there was a change made. So instead it referred to statutory, the statutory measure of inflation, which at the time was was RPI. So there was no change at all to the benefits that members got. It was just being expressed in a different way. But then in 2011, the government changed the statutory measure from CPI to, so from RPI to CPI to consumer price inflation, which is typically lower. And that change fed through to the pension increases that the TPT were providing. But it also it fed through to all pension increases. And there's a question whether benefits that were earned before 2003 should continue to be linked to the higher level of RPI pension, typically higher RPI pension increases. That's kind of the one big question that is affecting. There's probably the single biggest impact across all of the schemes. The next kind of class of question is looking at changes that were meant to have retrospective effect. They were meant to change benefits that were earned in the past. Now within pension scheme, within pension scheme legislation and within trust deeds, there's often protections for members around making benefits, making changes that are retrospective. And there is a question, should those changes actually have retrospective effect or should they apply only in the future, comes down to scheme design, comes down to the precise wording of the rules. Given those, the changes typically that we're talking about over the last 30-40 years have been to reduce the value of the benefits of the payable. Then if the change only actually applies from the future, that would normally be expected to increase the value of the benefits pay to payable to members and so increased costs to the scheme and the employer. So that is a kind of one class of change, one class of issue, the other, the third class is related. It's similar but slightly different. It's where a change was intended to only apply for the future, but the way it was implemented, the document that was that brought forward the change or whatever it was, was finalized after that intended effective date. Maybe it was signed a bit later or whatever it might be, but there's been a question, should that change apply from the intended effective date or should it only take effect from when the documents bringing it in was actually finalized and that the different or the potential there again, because these changes we're talking about generally were worsening benefits were reducing the value of those benefits. If there's a delay from when it was implemented, then that would normally lead to increased costs, increased benefits for members. The actual impact is really specific. That's this case for both option of both issues two and three. You know, in principle it's the same kind of issue. There's a, a question there about when these changes took effect. The actual impact for a given class of members for a given scheme is highly dependent on the particular change we're talking about. If it's a, a relatively minor change, you know, it's for issue 3. If it's a a relatively minor change that was finalized, you know, two weeks later, to be honest, minimal impact, nobody really cares. If it's a much more significant change and there's a much longer delay, but actually it could have much more of an impact. And so it's the same kind of kind of question, the same principles there, but it could have a different impact. That's very scheme specific. Now these three classes of issues are the ones that were taken account of when the the scheme actually provided an assessment of the potential exposure back in 22 into 23. These were what was being looked at these these questions. But the court is also going to be asked some other questions. And the first is slightly fundamental point. And actually does the Trustee have the power to make any changes to the future benefits? Not all schemes do. Again, it's a matter of scheme construction. If that is the case then should actually should all changes to future benefits be void, you know, not just for a slightly delayed for a period of time that would have a significant impact on additional liabilities, it would be a really extreme outcome. We, I think our understanding is for TP TS view that isn't the case, but that it's, it felt that it's a question that is being asked to the court. So you know, hopefully the court will consider it and will come to the the appropriate, although the right answer. The final set of question or questions relates to a another case that came out recently. It's kind of merged over the last couple of years at the Circle Virgin Media case and it's looking at, it's another case looking at when changes have been made to pension schemes in the past. Give you the background to that in the past. And again, just to be clear, this is the legal layperson background. We're not lawyers. It's in legal advice etcetera, etcetera. In the past, many schemes or employers chose to contract out and that effectively meant that they were able to pay. They paid lower National Insurance and members paid lower National Insurance as well. But in return they have to provide a pension benefit that was at least of a certain quality. And so if there was changes that were made to the pension benefits they were providing in a certain time frame, this runs from 1997 to 2016, If they made changes to the pension benefits they were providing in that time, the trustees, before they could make the change, needed to request from their actuary and get confirmation that the proposed changes wouldn't affect the ability to meet that test, that they would still be providing benefits that were of sufficient quality. And the Virgin Media case looked at what happened if that confirmation either wasn't requested or received, or possibly it was, but actually given 70 years ago, no one can find the thing anymore. So you can't locate it. What does that mean? And the ruling of the court was that meant the change actually was void, didn't happen. And that was confirmed on appeal last year, last July. So this is something that potentially effects many, many schemes across the industry. Any anyone who has contracted out at some point. And TPT are, are one of those. So they are, you know, in common with many schemes in the industry, it's it's a live issue given it's such a live issue, given it affects so many schemes. The industry is engaging with DWP at the moment to see if there's the option of an industry wide solution to this to fix it. But in the meantime, there is a lot of uncertainty out there. It's not clear what the right answer is. It's not clear what actions, schemes or employers should be taking given the nature of this Verity case that the court of the questions the course is going to be considering. You know, they are essentially looking at changes to pension schemes and whether they're valid or not. I think the decision was taken to add questions dealing with Virgin Media to the questions that Call will be considering. And I think that was entirely sensible decision given what's being looked at. So the court will be looking about, we know that there's an awful lot of other pension schemes, we'll be looking very carefully too and. Eagerly weighting the the ruling to see how applicable it is to their scheme. But I think it's just another source of uncertainty that's affecting a lot of the industry, including TPT at this point. So that's the kind of the background to to where we are. But what actually is the potential impact for members and Richard's going to pick that up now. Yes, thank you, Mike. We've got an example here picking up issue 1, the the, the which inflation measures should be used for pension increases. And our example member here retired in 2011 with a pension of £10,000 a year, and they'd earned all of that pension before 2003. So all of it has the the question about which inflation measures should be used and the the Gray line here shows how that pension will have increased picking up CPI inflation in the calculations starting on the left hand side at 10,000 and reaching at the blue vertical line the current value 13,900 a year of pension. So that's what's actually happened in practice. If the court decides that it should be RPI that applies for this person, then actually their pension should increase up to 15,300 a year, that's an increase of £1400 a year and they should receive back payments of just under £10,000. And in future that pension will continue to increase in line with RPI, which we'd expect to be higher than than CPI. So there are a number of different aspects where depending on the court ruling the member might get really quite significantly higher benefits and it's these additional benefits that are the cause of additional potential liabilities and potential additional costs for employers. Now some of the the employers in single employer schemes have a a further question that's being asked. Should the pensions actually increase at 5% a year? And if that were the case for this particular example member, their pension now would currently be around 20,000 a year and they'd be due back payments in excess of 40,000 lbs. So given the numbers just for one person, you can see how these add up really quite significantly and quite quickly across a range of pension scheme members. That's the impact of or potential impact of issue one on members. What about issues two and three? The the ones about timing of changes? Well, not a huge amount of specific insight that we can offer on that because as Mike said earlier, it is very dependent on the particular circumstances of the scheme, on the changes that have been made, the length of any delays in documenting the change and the the details of the the members involved. So that's the particular area that is going to be highly scheme and member specific. But the impact on members collectively are the, the, the source of additional liabilities and that's something that will affect the employers and, and what do we know about that? And, and we've, we've certainly had at least one question come in already about the potential additional costs, which we'll we'll move on to. Of course it does depend on the the court ruling and what, if any, updates the court decides are needed. There have been some estimates before by the TPT scheme Actuary and they totalled around half a billion pounds covering issues 1-2 and three when those figures were produced in 2022. And just thinking about the scale of the figures, it's clearly very significant for employers across the whole of the, of TPT. And some of you, as you've answered already in the poll, have some very significant figures that you'd have to deal with. And those that, that are unsure, I'm not certainly something that I, I, I'd encourage you to, to establish. Now, given the way financial markets have changed since 2022, we actually think the numbers will have reduced to a degree and perhaps it's between 300 million and 400 million now, but still still some big, big figures. The actual outcome of course will depend. The impact may be 0 if the court comes to the helpful conclusion. Equally as Mike explained with issues 4:00 and 5:00, there are broader questions that have not at this stage been quantified. So the numbers could be higher as well. So there is a a very wide range of outcomes and that's one of the reasons why all of you on this call I'm sure will be very interested in in, in where things emerge in the multi employer schemes. For those of you that that are in those, each employer will actually be affected by the overall impact on the scheme, not just the impact on its individual members. And that is one of the examples of the, the sharing, the pooling of risk within the multi employer schemes that TBT runs. And if you are an employer in one of those schemes, I think it's important to have in mind the overall effect on your scheme. And we can see some of the the numbers here for three of the the key multi employer schemes, the impact on the liabilities here. Essentially it's due to issue 1, the the inflation measure in each case and for the the independent schools scheme, the growth plan and the social housing scheme, between 2 and 4% increase in in liabilities is what's expected if the the case goes unfavorably. Now for single employer schemes, as we've said it, it's highly variable and there are some big numbers that some people may see. We know that over the last few years a number of employers have exited from the multi employer schemes and made a provisional exit payment to to that that scheme. And once we have the court ruling and there is clarity that will enable the TPT scheme actuary to confirm the final figures. And if necessary, if there are any additional, excuse me, liabilities, then those employers will be asked to make a balancing payment to cover their share of those extra liabilities. And, and once they've made that payment that would then draw a line under their obligations to, to that multi employer scheme. And what might the the numbers look like? Well, it, it really will depend, as we've said on a number of occasions already, depend on the, the specific circumstances of, of the particular employer. These are our estimates of the the average impact on those employer exit payments. For example, if we think about the social housing scheme, the extra liabilities would mean broadly a 10% increase in the deficit and that translates into about a 10% increase in the exit payment because that exit payment is a share of the deficit. As a different example, the growth plan that has a much smaller deficit than than CHIPS and that means the the extra 3% in that case of of liabilities actually has a bigger proportionate impact on the the deficit and therefore on the exit payment. So some of you who have gone through that process that there are potential additional payments as I say depending on the the outcome of the the case. So where does that this leave employers and what can you do about it now? I think as as Mike said at the outset, it does make sense to to hope that the the case is successful, but at least to plan and think ahead to the possibility of extra liabilities. And if there are those extra liabilities, how will they be covered? Well, two general ways of doing that, either through additional cash contributions or through extra investment returns. And I suspect the default is likely to be through additional contributions. And we have an example scheme here. This is a picture showing a projection of the schemes liabilities, the technical provisions in the yellow line of projection over time from the left to the right and the schemes assets, the Gray dotted line, a projection of those as well. And this you can see that both the assets and liabilities start the left hand side at just short of £60 million and the scheme is pretty close to being fully funded. And this is a fairly typical picture that we see. And in this case the a combination of extra contributions and investment returns are expected to get that scheme to full funding in in a year or Two's time, at which point the investments might be moved on to a lower risk basis. Now what happens if we have an unfavorable outcome from the court? Well, potentially those liabilities, the yellow line, they jump up and the assets are no longer sufficient to fully fund the scheme. And one of the options then unsurprisingly will be to fill that gap or in this case it's probably five, £6 million, fill that gap with extra cash contributions. But for all of you who are on this call, I'm sure you will have commitments and projects that you would much rather use your money towards rather than additional pension liabilities. So is there an alternative? And that's where investments scheme investments could help. And on this chart, we're showing a strap an investment strategy aiming for higher returns and that's the the blue line showing that the assets based on those higher returns actually growing to achieve full funding where the blue line cuts the yellow line perhaps around 20-30. And for that to those investment returns to bridge the gap without needing extra cash contributions. And that option is, is certainly something to consider. It may well be that in practice it's a combination of cash and investment returns. But I think that the key point for employers is to recognize that cash is not the only option. And what will employers need to consider? Well, certainly the balance between investment returns and contributions, the, the impact on, on risks and whether the the the employer is comfortable with any increase in that level of risk. And there's one important consideration and I think why in our view it makes it important to start considering these options now is that we have a new pension funding regime which came into effect towards the end of last year. And under that regime there is a requirement to fund schemes assuming that they will be invested in low risk investments at a future date. And that is generally when most of the members have retired and for some schemes that will not be far away. And in that situations the scope to pay for additional liabilities through investment returns could be limited. So time is ticking and we do think it makes sense to think now and be in a position to act as soon as possible once the court verdict is known. And there is a further point that the new regime requires deficits to be paid off as quickly as they are reasonably affordable. And so for employers that are fortunate enough to have funds that could pay for those additional liabilities relatively straightforwardly, there is likely to be a request for for more cash and, and, and probably sooner rather than later. And when might those extra contributions affect you? Well, we know that there's there'll be a, a number of you on the call who have a, a 30th of September 2024 actuarial valuation in, in progress. The deadline for that is the end of 2025. And as Mike explained with the timeline earlier on, we are expecting the court verdict during 2025. TPC have indicated that if the verdict is known soon enough, then they would at least need to think about whether to factor any additional liabilities into any deficit recovery plan for these 2024 valuations. And if that happens, then normally those extra contributions would come in from April 2026, so actually only just over a year away. So we could see some impact on cash contributions now relatively soon for some and all that. Any other options? Well, we have seen some instances in similar situations where members who have received a windfall and unexpected increase in their benefits have actually agreed to give that increase up, meaning that employers haven't had to fund additional liabilities. Now it will very much depend on the legal position. We know there can be challenges with exactly this, that sort of structure. So it's by naming certain that that would work. But given that it has been something used in other cases, we certainly think it would be something worth employers considering. And it is always, of course, important to think about any decision that you make about your pension schemes in the context of your broader overall strategy. What are your objectives? What are you, How are you trying to achieve them? I mentioned that some employers have taken advantage of favorable financial conditions recently too exit from the multi employer schemes, even though there has been uncertainty around the final exit cost. And I'm sure that will others will be be looking at options such as that and potentially ensuring benefits when when we have more clarity. But when you're thinking about how you might deal with additional liabilities if they arise, and thinking about that balance between cash contributions and investment returns, it's really important to think about your long term strategy at the same time as that could it actually influence the approach you want to take? And a particular example there is that if you're one of the employers with a single employer scheme, you want to look to ensure your liabilities in the future to remove risks from your balance sheet. Well, in that case, you'll be actually be targeting a higher level of funding and it's more likely that you'll want to use investment returns to help you bridge that larger gap. Now that's some of the strategic topics I'll hand back to Mike who's going to pick up on the more the shorter term issue of accounting. Thanks Richard. Before we go on to look at the, the coming financial statements and this this coming year and just one of the, a quick poll question, just thinking about your most recent financial statements, the the most recently completed ones and just a question, how have you allowed for any potential additional liabilities in those statements And again, options on the screen, Hopefully it's A, we haven't mentioned it at all. B, we've included a narrative in the accounts, but we haven't put any figures around it. So just the background and the statement there, C is kind of building on that. So we've included the narrative, but we have actually also put some numbers in there as well. And then D is we've confirmed that we've actually provided for us on the balance sheet in some way or some form. Again, we'll just give a few more seconds just to let last few responses come in. Most of them we can look OK. So yeah, I think that's probably what we tend to excite. A lot of people haven't mentioned it or have included some form of narrative. Where there's a narrative, a minority have also quantified it that nobody is yet providing for ironing. That's based on what we see. That's as expected. But I wonder if there's an interesting overlay with the the first question about materiality. Maybe how far down people are going in, in this list may be affected by the size of the the quantum of the potential additional liabilities. OK, that's great. That's the most recent statements that have been done. There's a question meant about going forward to the next set of statements and you know this issue, what will the accounting impact of it be, you know less grammatically correct, when will the accounting impact be? They are having the two key questions in terms of what the impact will be. We expect it to go through above light. So there's lots of different kinds of organizations on the call who will use different terminology for their accounts. But essentially we expect this to go as a past service cost through income and expenditure above the line which will hit net income. So I think hopefully that has covered everyone's language that they use for their own financial statements. If there's anyone who isn't clear haven't got it, do just put it in the chat and we can we can pick that up. But essentially, you know it goes in at the top level is what we think as to when it would be recognized, when you would have to allow for it. I think that's a bit harder and that really depends on the interaction between three different dates. You've got the the date that the ruling itself actually comes out, you've got the year end and you've got your signing date, the date the statements themselves signed off. I think if the ruling comes out before your year end, then I would expect generally auditors to want to to see provision that. And again, this is on the assumption that there is some additional liability and that it's sufficient, there's sufficient clarity in the ruling to to be able to make these judgments. Again, we're not, we're not making assumptions about that. But but on that basis, we would expect auditors to want to see it recognized based on the discussions we're having with them on over similar issues and have been over the last few years. That tends to be their reaction. So if the ruling comes out before the year end, I think we would expect to want it to be recognized. If it comes out between the year end and the date of signing, I think that's when it gets a bit harder. I can see auditors definitely wanting, you know, commentary beefed up, possibly quantification if it's material, possibly even the post balance sheet events. But I think it's, that's really I think for discussion with the auditors and I suspect different ones will have different views in part driven by materiality of the amounts involved and the Organisation itself. But I think that's that's hard, particularly because the ruling could come out two days before you're due to sign off the statements. It's really important going back to this point about planning to understand what you're doing what what the options or what be how you will be dealing with these things so that there aren't surprises right at the last minute. And I guess the third option is the ruling comes out after your signing dates. You want to get the statements produced and signed before signing, before the ruling itself comes out. I think that's arguably the best outcome in that, you know, hopefully you can use the same approach that you've used to date, you know, with that narrative, with that some quantification in the notes. But it means that, you know, you don't need to do any more what you don't need to try and put something in at short notice for this set of the accounts. And it gives time to look at the impact of the ruling, look at what others are doing and how they're treating their accounts and hopefully do things in a more measured way. So I think that is the different options. Worth saying that for those of you in the multi employer schemes where you're accounting for the for the pension schemes on the basis of the deficit contributions you pay be slightly different. We expect that to come through as and when the new deficit contributions reflect the liabilities as and as Richard said, that's that will depend on the particular scheme. But I think the key point with all of this is talking to auditors at an early stage, working out what their expectations are. And ideally I would say scenario plan around what happens if the ruling comes out before would you to sign or afterward you to sign? What happens if it's small, medium, large, to get a clear idea of what they would be expecting you to do so that there aren't any surprises. And then if something does come out just before you're due to sign, you know exactly what's expected of you. They know what you're going to be doing, and it's all clear to everybody. We understand that the TPT is, is looking to issue some material by the end of the month that will hopefully be helpful for those kind of conversations with auditors. So again, I think having those conversations, trying to avoid any surprises has to be the right thing. That was a quick kind of look through the accounting impact. I think just thinking then of next steps and sort of actions that can be taken. I mean, it's obvious, it's been obvious throughout the last four years, but you know, ensuring no surprises. We, I think it's easy that you can kind of tell people when this happened several years ago and if possibly then yeah, don't, don't live and believe it. Don't keep up to date. It's really important to keep people informed of progress so that as and when these things happen, it doesn't come out of the blue. We found doing update sessions for boards, for finance committees works really well just to keep things ticking over so people know what's going on. As I said, manage the impact on the accounts, engage with auditors scenario, plan to make it absolutely crystal clear what will be required in different scenarios. You don't want to be having, you know, trying to have that conversation at the last minute with all the pressure of signing with everything else that's going on. Possibly when the auditors are trying to have, you know, 20 other similar conversations with with other clients, you want to be sure that you're clear in your own mind what you need to do and that they're going to be happy with it to start thinking about how you might plan to manage any additional abilities. Again, you know, we hope there aren't any, but if there are, have a plan in mind as to how you can deal with them. What's that balance between contributions and the investment returns, what work for the Organisation? Anything you can do to get ahead has to be great in terms of saving time later if it turns out it's needed. And then tied into all of that is just being ready to act. You know, as Richard said, some of the options if they may be a relatively short window available, for example, to to target investment returns, you want to be able to take advantage of that if it's necessary rather than, you know, having to, you know, think about what you want to do and potentially miss some opportunities in that way. That's the kind of the the run through and the steps you can take. Now, I think we're on to Q&A and I think, Richard, are you going to pick this up? Yes, I'm conscious that we're we're on the the scheduled time. So I appreciate that some of you will need to to duck out. We will just stay on for a few minutes to pick up some initial questions and we will then follow up directly with any that we we don't have a chance to deal with. But I'll know if we just look through a couple of the questions that we we have received and thank you for the the, the ones that we we have, we certainly won't be able to get through all of them. One question if Mike, perhaps I can see ask you this one, if a pensioner has died, could there be a liability to their dependents? And you know, is that just for back payments or is that is that for more? Yeah. And that's a really good question. And I think that yeah, generally we would expect you know, if the if the pensioner, if the, if the pensioner member their, their pension would have changed then they subsequently dependent pension payable as well that would also be of different amount. But in terms of the the back payments, I think again in this kind of for these kinds of changes, for these kinds of benefit issues, we would normally see any back payments be being paid across to a subsequent dependent or beneficiary following the death of of the member. In the meantime, again, it's it's a legal question. So I don't want to be too definitive. That's what you would always do. So in terms of bingo, I think that's probably about 5 or 6 times I've said that now. But you know, I think normally that would be the case. Yes. It's you know, essentially any back pains or an entitlement that the individual would have had were were they alive and draw during the benefit from scheme. And so they would be expected to be paid across to a dependent or a subsequent beneficiary. Thanks Mike. A really good question here about multi employer schemes where an employer joined a multi employer scheme after the RPICPI change. So in this case that would mean after 2003, are they liable for the pre joining liability around the RPICPI difference? And I think that comes back to the point I made earlier that it's actually for those who've been multi employer schemes. It's important to look at the overall impact on the scheme, not just the impact on your members because your obligation is towards a share of the deficit typically. And if that deficit gets larger, then even though you've joined after 2003, your obligations could, could increase. So I mean, it's a, it's a really excellent question. But unfortunately, if you are in that position, then then that's something that could, could affect your, your contributions in the future. We've got another question here about the impact on employees who haven't yet retired. So these are people whose benefits might have increased as a result of the the court ruling, but they haven't yet that the pension payments haven't started. And the question is will they be liable for additional payments to make up the shortfall? Well, that's one part. And no, it's certainly my expectation that's that would fall to the employer. And there's a follow on part to that question. Will this affect pensions held with both previous and current employers? And certainly it could, I mean, it will, it will depend on the, the circumstances of the member and the, the, the, the court ruling. But it's certainly something where it could if, if they're, if they, for example, if it's an individual who's got several periods of membership within the social housing scheme, it could affect any of their periods before 2003 at least. So that was a good question. And there's there's lots of good multi employer questions here. There's another one in a multi employer scheme with different participation start dates. So it's similar, similar point employers having different proportionate shares of the scheme. How might TPT allocate any extra costs across the employers? And I think that that will be a a very interesting one to see how that play plays out. Mike, I don't know if you've got any thoughts. On that, I mean, as I think, as you say, I think you know, generally the deficit has been shared amongst employers based on their share of the scheme as a whole. So if you're 10% of the scheme, you pay 10% of the, you're responsible for 10% of the deficit, you're paying 10% of contributions or whatever. So I guess at one level you would expect it to be added on like that given the nature of these schemes, which essentially is a set up on a non segregated basis. You know, there's a single pot of money that everyone pays into. It can be difficult to do much else, I think for allocating costs. But I think that's probably a maybe a level of speculation slightly too far. I think it's a let's see what the ruling is and then and how it feeds through and what clarity varies. And then maybe there will be that they're clearly then we'll have to be some discussions and decisions taken as to to how those costs are allocated. Yeah, no, absolutely. And. I guess the, I guess the related point to that of course is you know, there, there will be some employers who have already left the scheme where, you know, the benefits in respect of their individuals will need to change. If if that is the ruling but they've left the scheme, they've got full and final, they're no longer liable for anything. It will need to be the remaining employers who who meet that cost. Yeah, that's a really good point actually. And that's one of the examples of multi employer schemes and the the way that orphan liabilities, the remaining employers are responsible for funding liabilities relating to employers that have left some time ago. So that's certainly another interesting dynamic and it's very interesting to see a number of questions about multi employer schemes and those slightly complicated dynamics that we see at play. Well, thank you very much for the questions. As I say, we've not been able to deal with anything like all of them. So we will come back to a number of you directly. But Many thanks for your attendance and see there's still a good number of people you on the line despite the extra 10 minutes, which I hope has been useful. We certainly hope that it has helped you. Shortly after we switch off the webinar, the screen will prompt you to complete a feedback survey and we'd really appreciate that. We're always wanting to make sure sessions are useful and improve them for future. So if you have just a minute or two to complete both of that feedback, we really would appreciate that. But thank you for coming along and we'll no doubt speak again. Thanks a lot. Goodbye. Thanks, everyone. Bye. _1740228855001