Move follows report from The Pensions Regulator urging trustees to improve connectivity with their schemes.

London, 17 May 2006: Bayer plc today announced the deployment of eShare, a comprehensive pensions governance system that will change forever the way that trustees manage the UK scheme of the Global healthcare and performance materials giant.

It follows the publication on 28th April of The Pensions Regulator’s mid-term strategy - which urged trustees to seek a greater understanding of, and increased connectivity to the schemes that they manage.

By implementing eShare’s pensions governance solution for their pension funds - with assets of around £750m - Bayer plc (www.bayer.co.uk) will give Trustees improved access to all types of information – and to each other. The eShare (www.eshareuk.com) solution is based on a collaborative, web-based technology platform that:
- Acts as an interface to every piece of static or dynamic information relating to pensions governance, and;
- Securely delivers that information to all relevant parties – from trustees to actuaries.

Ultimately, the solution focuses the trustees on the issues at hand, be that a decision, a meeting, a document, a process or a business plan task – which in turn enables better decision-making and greater accountability.

The move is one of the first major initiatives from Pensions Governance Director Trevor Dickson, who took up the role in November 2005.

“This report confirms what many of us have known for a while – that if we are going to improve pensions governance we must give Trustees every tool available to do the job properly,” said Dickson. “That starts with improved transparency and quality information but goes much further – and that is what eShare will provide.”

The Pensions Regulator specifically highlighted the need for schemes to improve trustee education and training.

One aspect of the Bayer solution that addresses this specific point is a Trusteeship area where trustees can access training resources. They can also record the activities they perform. On the whole the aim is to be able to demonstrate to the Regulator that Bayer is an example of how a scheme should be run.

eShare’s managing director Alister Esam said: “The Regulator wants to see schemes change. We are providing the technology to make that happen. This is true from the very largest scheme in the land through to the smallest of schemes where costs are crucial but so are members.”

A full copy of The Pension Regulator’s release can be found at http://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/mediaCentre/pressReleases/pn06/pn06-14.aspx

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