24 January 2013

Legal & General Workplace Savings has launched the Mastertrust Employer Group (MEG) for trust based group pensions schemes, which use Mastertrusts.

The new forum for Mastertrust participants held its inaugural meeting on 10 January.

At that meeting the Mastertrust members attending comprised Marks & Spencer, Debenhams plc, Arcadia Group Ltd, Mothercare UK and Ladbrokes plc. They were joined by The Co-operative Group who have appointed Legal & General Workplace Savings to provide bundled administration and investment services to their own scheme.

Paul McBride, Director of Legal & General Trustees Limited said:  "This Mastertrusts forum is unique and forward looking, and we are excited and proud to be part of it.

We already have a strong list of participants, which includes a number of large employers who were unable to attend our first meeting.

However, we are open to expansion and would welcome more members. Our clients are pension professionals - and they know their people better than we can hope to.

Not only can we learn a great deal from them, but we firmly believe that members have much to gain from such close and open collaboration."

MEG is a forum, open to all participating employers, whose principal aims are:

  • To improve governance visibility and accountability
  • To shape future scheme developments
  • To act as a unified voice representing hundreds of thousands of members

Employers who may be interested in signing up to MEG should contact Tina Henry, Legal & General Workplace Savings on 01737 374425. Or email tina.henry@landg.com

Legal & General Workplace Savings is a member of The Master Trust Association (MTA), which promotes best practice within Mastertrusts. Its members are drawn from Mastertrust providers across the industry. The MTA aims to optimise member outcomes and scheme governance.

Both the MTA and L&G Workplace Savings have responded to the Pensions Regulator (tPR) announcement on regulatory framework for Mastertrusts announced on 15 January.

Workplace Savings was named Auto Enrolment Provider of the Year by the UK Pensions Awards (May 2012) and Corporate Platform/Wrap Provider of the Year in the Professional Pensions Awards (June 2012).

Legal & General's workplace savings platform, WorkSave, is a market leading auto enrolment delivery system. We have already auto enrolled Sainsbury's and Barclays' employees (in Q4 last year).

We also expect to auto enrol employees of Alliance Boots, Asda, Co-op, Marks & Spencer and Ladbrokes by the end of Q1 2013.

In total, we expect to auto enrol over 500,000 employees, from schemes won by Legal & General to date.

For these schemes existing pension assets are being transferred onto our Worksave platform, which achieved assets under administration at £5.3bn ytd Q3 2012(1).

Notes to editors

The information contained in this press release is intended solely for journalists and should not be relied upon by private investors or any other persons to make financial decisions.

1) Workplace Savings assets under administration for Q3 2012 year to date were £5.3bn, up by 39% compared to the full year to 31 December 2011 (£3.8bn). Net inflows were up by £1.1bn over the year to 30 September 2012, with £0.4bn in Q3. For further information about Legal & General's record third quarter sales figures go to

http://www.legalandgeneralgroup.com/media-centre/press-releases/2012/recordthirdquartersales.html

The Legal & General Group, established in 1836, is one of the UK's leading financial services companies. As at June 30 2012, we were responsible for investing £388 billion worldwide on behalf of investors, policyholders and shareholders.  We also had over seven million customers in the UK for our life assurance, pensions, investments and general insurance plans.

For more information please contact:

Legal & General Assurance Society Limited.

Registered address:
One Coleman Street
London EC2R 5AA.
Registered in England 166055.

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