The competition watchdog has found that there are no barriers to entry or expansion that might limit competition within the consultancy or fiduciary management industries.

In the investment consultancy market, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that no one firm had a market share of more than 20 per cent, and the three largest companies controlled less than half the market.

However, there have been working papers that have stated that large consultancies’ existing relationships with clients might be helping them to gain market share in fiduciary management.

The solutions are tricky to identify and problems lie with cleaning up the tendering process for fiduciary management services. This may suggest that professional trustees could become more pivotal in the future.

Rosalind Connor said that the only problem with this is that if the trustee is not an investment specialist, they might still require outside help.

However, this help often proves to be worth its cost. Rosalind further stated that the primary benefit of third-party advice is to cut through jargon and steer trustees to ask the right questions, but that boards must not delegate their responsibility for the decision.

“If you have a trustee who is empowered, that’s much better than a trustee who’s relying on someone else to tell them what to think.”

Read Rosalind’s comments in Pensions Expert