Pensions

Our award-winning pensions team is experienced in advising trustees, employers, consultants and insurers on all aspects of pensions law. As well as day-to-day advice, we have particular experience advising on benefit redesign, scheme closures and liability reduction. We are industry-leaders in longevity hedging, buy-in, buy-out, asset-backed funding, funds and corporate restructuring. Unlike other pension law practices, we work on litigation, as this enables us to brief clients in full on any potentially contentious issues and provides a balanced approach to our advice. CMS also leads the way on pensions de-risking transactions – in 2022, we advised on over 20 transactions with a combined value of £17.4bn – more than half the total value of all transactions completed that year – acting on 6 of the 8 longevity swap conversions to date, and many large-scale longevity swaps.

We provide schemes of all sizes with clear, pragmatic and proactive advice. Keeping our clients up-to-date is a priority for us and we share our unparalleled insight through a wide range of resources, which focus on what you need to know and, practically, what you need to do.

With more than 75 UK lawyers, we have the largest pension teams of any major UK law firm (and the largest London pensions team in a full-service law firm). We are widely regarded as market-leaders in the pensions industry maintaining our top tier rankings for Pensions and Pensions Litigation in Chambers and Legal 500 for 18 years. 

Industry recognition

• ‘European Pensions Law Firm of the Year’, European Pensions Awards, 2023 and 2022.
• ‘Pensions Lawyers of the Year 2021’, Pensions Age Awards.
• 'Award for Supporting Development', Professional Pensions Rising Star Awards, 2023 and 2020.
• In 2021 we published CMS’s Pensions Law Handbook (15th edition), a definitive 1,000 page guide to UK pensions law, awarded the APL Wallace Medal for “meritorious work in communicating and explaining legal issues affecting pensions”.