Alliance Boots to outsource part of company pension scheme

Alliance Boots, the merged operation between Alliance Unichem and Boots, has today announced the outsourcing of its £300 million defined benefit pension scheme which was the old Alliance Unichem pension arrangement. This scheme has around 3000 members with liabilities of around £300 million although this is only a small portion of the company's overall pension arrangements.

The assets have been outsourced to Pension Corporation's insurance division which has recently secured outsourcing contracts totalling assets of £4.5 billion. There is no doubt that more and more companies in the UK will be looking to outsource their pension fund arrangements and make cost savings and efficiency savings where possible. While there are no plans as yet to outsource the remaining Boots pension scheme, which is much larger than the scheme which has been outsourced, this must remain an option for the company in the medium to long term.

Many people believe that in due course we will see the creation of even more pension asset management companies such as Pension Corporation which will effectively take on the management of pension assets and liabilities of individual companies. There are also potential savings to be made for underlying companies and the fact this should allow them to concentrate on their underlying operations.