About This Event
“Know exactly where your fiduciary duty ends and your personal liability begins.”
A governance and compliance intensive for trustees and scheme secretaries operating under the RBA, URBRA and SSRA regimes. The course works through current regulatory requirements, the fiduciary standard expected of a trustee, and the scheme documentation that has to stand up to a supervisory inspection.
What You'll Explore
A scheme-specific governance and compliance framework, defended before an expert panel
A compliance register covering every filing and disclosure your supervisor requires
A trustee liability checklist you can apply at every board meeting
Redrafted trust deed and scheme rule clauses that remove known ambiguity
A member complaints procedure built to survive tribunal review
Who Should Attend
Open to all qualifying staff, particularly: Board of Trustees, Scheme Secretaries, Legal and Compliance Officers, Principal Officers.
Why This Course Matters
Inspection-Ready Compliance
Walk through what RBA, URBRA and SSRA inspectors actually test, and close the documentation gaps before they are written up as findings against the scheme. Most findings are documentation failures rather than policy failures, and they cost far less to fix before the inspector arrives.
Trustee Liability Shielding
Understand where the fiduciary standard bites personally, and which minutes, disclosures and processes protect a trustee who acted properly. You leave knowing exactly what the board's record has to show for a decision to be defensible two years later.
Scheme Rules That Hold
Test your trust deed, rules and code of conduct against live dispute cases, so decisions made under pressure survive review by a tribunal. Ambiguity in the rules is found by the first member who disputes a benefit, and by then it is expensive.
Programme
Day 1
Regulatory architecture: RBA, URBRA and SSRA requirements
You will map the current regulatory requirements across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, taking each supervisor in turn, and build a single compliance register that tracks every filing, deadline and disclosure your scheme owes. Sessions cover the licensing and reporting cycle, the returns RBA, URBRA and SSRA actually inspect, contribution and investment compliance, and the penalties that follow a late or incomplete submission. You finish the day with your own register populated and the owner of each obligation named.
Day 2
Fiduciary duty, trustee liability and the scheme rules
You will work through what the fiduciary standard demands in practice, where personal liability attaches, and what protection a properly kept record actually provides. The afternoon audits a trust deed and scheme rules against real supervisory findings: the clauses that create ambiguity on benefit discretion, contribution holidays and surplus, and the amendments that remove it. You also draft the conflict declaration and minuting practice that makes a contested decision defensible two years later.
Day 3
Disputes, governance framework build and blueprint defence
You will handle a member complaint from first letter to tribunal, learning what evidence an adjudicator expects and how early, documented handling keeps a dispute out of formal proceedings. You then assemble the three days into a scheme-specific governance and compliance framework covering the register, the rule amendments, the conflicts process and the complaints procedure, and defend it before an expert panel under the same scrutiny your board and your regulator will apply.
Standards & Faculty Benchmark
RBA, URBRA & SSRA frameworks
Retirement Benefits Authority (Kenya), URBRA (Uganda) and SSRA (Tanzania) supervisory frameworks and scheme rules.
IOPS supervisory principles
International Organisation of Pension Supervisors principles for risk-based supervision of private pensions.
OECD Core Principles
OECD Core Principles of Private Pension Regulation covering funding, governance and member protection.
These are the frameworks your supervisor, your auditors and your sponsor's legal advisers already work from.
Is This Right for You?
- ☑You sit on a board of trustees or serve as scheme secretary
- ☑Your scheme is preparing for inspection, merger or rule amendment
- ☑You need a defensible governance framework, not just an update
Good to Know
No legal background is assumed; regulation is taught for decision-making, not for litigation. You leave with a compliance register, a revised governance framework and a trustee liability checklist.
The Bottom Line
Walk back into the boardroom with a governance framework your supervisor can inspect, and your trustees can actually follow.
Recommended For
Open to all qualifying staff, particularly: Board of Trustees, Scheme Secretaries, Legal and Compliance Officers, Principal Officers.