Legal & General has announced it will exit the defined benefit pension administration market, after striking a deal to pass its almost 100 schemes on to Deloitte Total Reward and Benefits.
In a statement on 6 March, the firm stated the transfer to DTRBL would be completed by the third quarter of 2017.
A spokesperson for Legal & General said DTRBL had been chosen following "a robust selection process".
"DTRBL are experts in this field and their experience and excellent service proposition will ensure the safeguard of customer interests and benefit both members and trustees.
"Charges to trustees will be unaffected by the proposal. DTRBL offers a fully-integrated and complete administration system (Intelligent), offering features not currently available to Legal & General’s Final Salary pensions clients," the statement read.
These new features included integrated self-service websites for members to view correspondence, nominate beneficiaries and run retirement benefit illustrations.
They also included access to scheme websites where meeting documents and reports could be stored and viewed.
L&G's decision to leave the DB administration market came as the active pension market shifts away from defined benefit and toward defined contribution.
Last week, the Office for National Statistics revealed workplace pension membership was at its highest level since records began in 1997, at 68 per cent.
Almost all this growth came from DC membership, which has seen a massive boost thanks to the introduction of auto-enrolment.
DC now makes up the majority of workplace pension membership, with 38 per cent of eligible people members of a DC scheme, compared to 28 per cent who are members of a DB scheme.
A flood of DB schemes, meanwhile, are moving to close to new members and future accruals, with Royal Mail among the most recent to raise the prospect of doing so.
In September last year, Marks & Spencer announced it was closing its final salary scheme to new accruals.
German car manufacturer BMW followed suit with its UK defined benefit scheme later the same month.
In August last year, JLT Employee Benefits reported that just 5 per cent of FTSE 250 companies were contributing to company DB schemes for a significant number of employees.
Meanwhile, the government is currently investigating a number of reforms to address the underfunding crisis affecting the DB sector.
