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Vanessa N. Wells

Legal Director

Vanessa has experience advising clients across the full spectrum of UK pensions matters and some global issues.

Vanessa is a Legal Director in our London Pensions group with almost 20 years' pensions experience. She has a wide range of employer and trustee clients and advises in relation to some of the largest pension schemes in the UK.

She has experience advising on general day-to-day matters such as individual member and technical queries, as well as larger projects such as de-risking solutions, mergers, governance reviews, corporate restructurings, benefit changes, funding negotiations, wind-ups and PPF/FAS assessments.

Vanessa spent a year on secondment at the Pensions Regulator assisting in the development of the Code of Practice on Trustee Knowledge and Understanding and the associated guidance documents.

Vanessa's recent projects include:

  • establishing a large defined benefit master trust
  • strategic advice on funding negotiations and corporate restructuring
  • multiple scheme mergers
  • closing to future accrual
  • advice to insurers on multibillion-pound buyouts
  • a consolidated, plain English, rules rewrite for a notionally sectionalized scheme with 12 benefit sections
  • governance reviews
  • strategic advice to employers on the implementation of automatic enrollment
  • Regular presenter at various public and client conferences and events across the UK and Ireland
  • Regular speaker at training sessions for trustees, employers and junior pensions lawyers
  • Has written articles for the pensions press
  • Member, International Sub-committee of the Association of Pension Lawyers
  • Associate Member, Pensions Management Institute
  • Advanced Diploma in Retirement Provision, Pensions Management Institute, January 2009
  • Diploma in International Employee Benefits, Pensions Management Institute, December 2008
  • Diploma in Legal Practice, Nottingham Law School, 2001-2002
  • LLB (Hons) in Law, University of Sheffield, 1998-2001
Vanessa Wells

Legal Director

Vanessa Wells

Legal Director

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