I am trustee to a small Final Salary pension scheme. The scheme's year end is 31st May. I understand it is the trustee's responsibility to approve and sign the accounts within 7 months of the year end, which means by 31st December in our case. Despite continual chasing by the trustee's, it was December 17th when the accounts were finally recieved, and with the Xmas holidays causing some of my colleagues to be unavailable after December 19th, reading, understanding and approving the accounts in time to be posted back became a frantic rush against time. There was far too little time to digest figures and ask questions.
We Trustee's take our responsibilities seriously, but surely the pension companies themselves must make some effort to make our task achievable. Are our experiences abnormal? Should we complain (and if so, who to)? Is there anything we can do next year to avoid the same thing happening?
Any and all comments and suggestions will be most gratefully recieved.