What is the first thing pension fund trustees do every morning? According to the old joke, they check the obituaries column to make sure they're not dead. As a group, trustees have a slight image problem: they are seen as being out of touch, ill-informed amateurs who mean well but cannot always get a grip on the fundamentals of the task facing them. Considering that UK occupational pension schemes control around £800bn (&euro1.2 trillion) of assets, that is a reputation that is more than a little troubling.

The problem was quantified in last year's report by Paul Myners on institutional investment in the UK. According to his research, 62% of trustees have no professional qualifications in finance or investment 77% have no in-house professionals to assist them more than 50% received less than three days' training when they became trustees 44% have not attended any courses since their initial 12 months of trusteeship and 49% spend three hours or less preparing for pension investment matters.