The Education Pensions Club is inviting universities with self-administered defined benefit (DB) pension schemes to take part in a new sector survey, designed to explore current practice, key challenges and the issues that are most important to those responsible for these schemes.
The survey forms part of the development of the Education Pensions Club, a new peer network being explored for professionals responsible for pensions within higher education.
Following discussions with universities and higher education institutions, it has become clear that many organisations are facing similar challenges around DB pension schemes, including governance, funding, long-term strategy, risk management and member engagement. The Education Pensions Club aims to provide a practical forum for sharing experiences, learning from peers and keeping up to date with developments affecting the sector.
Share your experience
The University Self-Administered DB Pension Scheme Survey is specifically for universities with a self-administered DB pension scheme – where the university is the sole participating organisation and has greater direct control over the scheme.
The survey asks about areas including:
The most useful things universities have done with their schemes over the last three years
Priorities for the future, including long-term strategy and value for money
Challenges around trustee governance, capacity and expertise
Whether schemes could potentially return financial value to their university
Approaches to recruiting member-nominated trustees
The issues where universities would particularly value insight from their peers
The survey should take no more than 10 minutes to complete and participation is free. All responses will be anonymised and aggregated.
Why take part?
The findings will help build a picture of how self-administered DB schemes are currently being managed across the higher education sector, highlighting common challenges as well as examples of approaches that are working well.
The results will also directly inform an upcoming BUFDG webinar on 17 September 2026, focused on the self-administered DB pension scheme landscape. Only anonymised, aggregated results will be shared during the webinar.
Everyone who takes part will also receive a summary of the key findings and takeaways following the webinar.
Complete the survey
If your university has a self-administered DB pension scheme, we would really value your input.
If you would like to find out more about the Education Pensions Club or the wider initiative, contact us today.
The Education Pensions Club is being developed by the team behind the Charities Pensions Club, building on its experience of bringing together pensions professionals to share knowledge, experiences and practical insight.
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