Pension Funds Editing and Proofreading Services

The statement says $84,000. It arrives once a year with a fund factsheet and a notice about investment principles, and the member reads it standing over a recycling bin. Further down sits a projected income figure in future money, hedged with three assumptions and a note that it is not a promise. The member cannot tell whether $84,000 is a lot, and nothing on the first page answers that.

The documents we edit for Pension Funds

Annual benefit statements and their projections arrive more often than any other pension document. Member booklets, scheme guides, and retirement option packs come next, along with transfer value statements and the warnings attached to them. Investment option and default fund explanations reach us regularly, as do statements of investment principles and implementation statements. On the governance side, we edit chair's statements and annual governance reporting, actuarial valuation summaries written for members and for employers, and covenant assessments. Trustee board and committee papers, de-risking and buyout communications, wind-up and consolidation notices, and employer consultation material for scheme changes complete the list. Our editors check that a member with no financial background can read the member documents.

What the editing involves

The projected income figure is what a member opens the envelope for, and in most statements we receive it sits below the account value rather than above it. A statement opening with an annual income in today's money, with Social Security beside it and the two added into one total, answers the question the member arrived with. The account value can follow, because it explains where the income figure came from. The projection, its assumptions, and its caveats are set by the scheme actuary and the trustees' advisors, and they reach us fixed. Our work is where they sit and how they read.

Contributing more and retiring later are the changes a member can make, and both belong beside the projection. A line reading "an extra $50 a month would add about $2,900 a year from age 67" can be acted on at a kitchen table. A line reading "members may wish to consider increasing their contributions" cannot. The modeling behind that example belongs to the scheme, and we do not produce it. We check that the illustration uses the member's own contribution rate and salary band rather than a generic figure, and that the same number appears in the covering letter.

Governance documents fail in the opposite direction, by recording that a process was followed rather than what was decided. A chair's statement reading "the trustees kept the default strategy under review throughout the year" does not say whether anything changed. "The trustees reviewed the default strategy in March and held the equity allocation at 60 percent" says what happened, at the same length. Where a date, a decision, and a figure appear in the trustee minutes, they should appear in the statement drawn from those minutes, worded the same way.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us is treated in confidence, including trustee papers, member data, and valuation material. We are editors, not actuaries, financial advisors, or lawyers, and we offer no opinion on investment strategy, benefit adequacy, or regulatory compliance. Member communications need approval from your trustees and their professional advisors. What we can do is put the income figure where the member is looking.