About Atkin Pensions

Atkin Pensions is an independent, specialist firm of actuaries and consultants who pride themselves on providing the best customer service and support individual clients need. We provide the full range of actuarial, administration and investment services trustees require to run their scheme.

Established in 1992 by Chris Atkin, the company has expanded primarily through word of mouth to the point where we now work with over 100 small defined benefit pension schemes, typically with assets under £50m.

We believe that small schemes do not need to be run in the same way as larger schemes.  Instead of being process and system led, they are small enough that they can be person led.  They can be managed by a small team of experts, led by an experienced client manager who will be involved in every calculation, every member query and every aspect of the pension scheme. This gives our clients the reassurance that every aspect of their scheme is being handled personally by experienced Scheme Actuaries who have an in-depth knowledge of their scheme, the trustees and the employer.

Our client teams, including our actuaries and consultants, develop their own personal relationships with the members, trustees and sponsors which means that they gain a deep understanding of the scheme and its circumstances.  They are therefore able to support their clients in responding appropriately (and proportionately) to any changes in legislation or market developments.  Our approach has been developed over the last 30 years to meet the needs of these smaller schemes with a focus on practical innovation, commercial common sense and adding value.

We have invested considerable time and resources to ensure that the technology that we use in relation to actuarial, administration and asset/liability modelling is state of the art. We believe that the provision of efficient services is dependent on having the right tools to work with.

By thinking about the needs of smaller schemes we believe that we have put together a proposition which focuses on adding value and ensuring that trustees (and the company) understand and engage with their scheme.

From the beginning, I wanted to focus on providing a service to small and medium-sized pension schemes which require a more hands-on and thoughtful approach than larger schemes. They usually have similar problems as larger schemes but without the same resources to throw at them and therefore need more innovative and collaborative solutions.

I believe there is a danger in larger firms that the larger clients can take precedence over the smaller ones and it is only by employing a specialist firm such as Atkin that they are able to get the attention they need.

Chris Atkin – Managing Director