Mark Ridler
Mark is a legal director at Hill Dickinson. He qualified as a solicitor in 1986 and, after initially specialising as a corporate lawyer, has advised pension scheme trustees and corporate clients for over 20 years on a wide range of pension matters, including: resolving historic errors in pension documentation; drafting and updating pension scheme documentation; the pensions aspects of corporate transactions and restructuring; the closure, wind up and merger of pension schemes; Pensions Regulator proceedings; the Local Government Pension Scheme; fiduciary management agreements; and auto-enrolment.
Chambers 2013 says that Mark is noted for his wide-ranging experience of pensions law and that one peer states: "He's technically very able" and clients have noted in Chambers that Mark offers “good, strong, pragmatic” advice.
Practice Area
Panel
- Contributing Author
Qualified Year
- 1986
Membership
- Association of Pension Lawyers
- National Association of Pension Funds (Treasurer, Yorkshire Group)
4 Contributions by Mark Ridler
PRACTICE NOTES
Articles of association for pension trustee companies: key drafting issues, MND requirements and compliance under the Companies Act 2006
THIS PRACTICE NOTE APPLIES TO TRUST-BASED OCCUPATIONAL PENSION SCHEMES
Occupational pension scheme trustees are generally either individual trustees or corporate trustees. A corporate trustee is typically a private limited company governed by the Companies Act 2006 (CA 2006). Corporate trustees are often installed in one of two ways:
in place of a board of individual trustees for a particular scheme. A trustee company is formed to act solely as the single trustee of that scheme, and the company’s directors effectively step into the role otherwise fulfilled by the board of individual trustees. Those directors are commonly called trustees, although, strictly, they are directors and are more accurately described as ‘trustee directors’. An independent professional trustee company can be appointed as a trustee director to a trustee company of this type
independent professional trustees are usually established as limited companies. They may be appointed alongside other individual trustees or as sole trustees. The person who carries out the corporate trustee’s day-to-day functions may, or may not, be a director of the trustee company
This Practice Note concerns the first kind of trustee referred to above. Why use a...
Pensions
PRACTICE NOTES
Ongoing DB/hybrid schemes: employer surplus payments—trustee powers, s37 PA 1995 requirements, s251 background, taxation, member interests, and forthcoming reforms under the Pension Schemes Bill plus TPR expectations.
FORTHCOMING CHANGE :
The Pension Schemes Bill, anticipated to obtain Royal Assent in 2026, would, among other matters, authorise trustees of DB schemes to change scheme rules by resolution so that surplus funds can be paid to the sponsoring employer, and to remove or ease limits created by earlier s 251 resolutions. This will be achieved by introducing a new s 36B into the Pensions Act 1995, while also dispensing with the need for a s 251 resolution under the Pensions Act 2004. The Bill will also allow regulations to set conditions for surplus distributions, ensuring trustee flexibility is balanced with protections for members, which may include:
actuarial certification;
compliance with specified funding frameworks; and
obligatory notifications to members.
The Finance Bill 2026–27 is expected to include measures to support surplus payments being made to members. For more detail, see: Relaxation of surplus extraction requirements below, LNB News 05/06/2025 42 and Pension Schemes Bill—tracker—Surplus extraction.
This practice note applies only to defined benefit and hybrid occupational pension schemes. Payments to employers from trust-based DB or earmarked schemes are subject to strict regulation...
Pensions
PRACTICE NOTES
Practical guide to reviewing and negotiating pension scheme buy-in/buy-out policies: quotations, benefit specification, pricing adjustments, GMP equalisation, data cleansing, warranties, trustee liability and data protection
Although every insurer produces its own policy documentation, they generally follow broadly comparable procedures and contain parallel provisions. In most cases, the documentation pack will consist of the following elements:
a quotation
a policy document setting out the terms and conditions
an acceptance document
Guidance from the Financial Conduct Authority, as set out in PERG 10.3 Q13, indicates that one-off annuity purchases chosen by the pension scheme trustees are highly unlikely to be regarded as constituting ‘day-to-day’ management decisions under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA 2000). Trustees can therefore, in those circumstances, select the annuity provider without first being authorised under FSMA 2000, but should only proceed after taking advice from a suitably qualified and experienced financial adviser.
This Practice Note outlines a typical buy-in/buy-out process and then examines what the quotation and the policy terms and conditions should contain. For further details on issues arising when considering buy-outs and buy-ins in respect of defined benefit occupational pension schemes, see Practice Note: De-risking—pension buy-outs and buy-ins.
Typical buy-out process
A typical buy-out process may be as follows:
the trustees supply details of the benefits to be bought out, for quotation purposes, to one or, preferably, several insurance...
Pensions
PRACTICE NOTES
Recovering section 75 employer debts in defined benefit schemes: triggers, calculation and certification, claims, limitation and enforcement
Trustees should be alert to circumstances that can trigger a debt under section 75 of the Pensions Act 1995, so they understand:
when such a liability crystallises, and
when they must act to have it assessed and recovered
They have a general obligation to reclaim their scheme’s assets. If they fail to act properly, and without undue delay, to recover an outstanding sum, this may amount to a breach of trust and could expose them to claims for any loss suffered.
For more on disputes that members may bring under occupational or personal pension schemes, see Practice Note: Pension disputes—avenues available to scheme members; and for trustee protections, see Practice Note: Trustee liability and protection in pensions.
When does a section 75 debt arise?
In summary, a section 75 debt becomes payable to an underfunded defined benefit scheme when:
the scheme is wound up
the employer is insolvent for section 75 purposes or enters a member’s voluntary liquidation
an employer in a multi-employer scheme that is open to future accrual stops participating in the...
Pensions
If you expected to see yourself on this page, click here.
