Principal Pensions Associate
Job description
Original text imported from Reed
At Gallagher Benefit Services, you’re a trusted partner to organizations navigating some of their most important people decisions. We help clients build better workplaces, where people feel supported, empowered, and inspired to thrive. Whether it’s shaping benefit strategies, designing wellbeing programs, or advising on workforce challenges, the work you do here creates meaningful change for businesses and the people who power them. We’re a community of bold explorers, trusted experts, and compassionate partners; working side by side to solve problems, and shape the future of work. Here, curiosity is encouraged, collaboration is second nature, and your ideas have room to grow. If you’re looking for a place where your contribution matters and where you can help build a better world of work; think of Gallagher.
Overview
Are you an experienced pensions professional looking for your next challenge? We’re seeking a Principal Pensions Administrator to join our team. You’ll play a key role in managing a portfolio of occupational pension schemes, including Defined Benefit (DB), Defined Contribution (DC), and Hybrid schemes. This is a fantastic opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of our clients and their members.
How you'll make an impact
- Administer and oversee a portfolio of pension schemes, ensuring all tasks and calculations are accurate and completed on time.
- Allocate cases, perform and review both automated and manual calculations.
- Draft and review correspondence, reports, and manage pensioner payrolls.
- Provide guidance and training to pensions administrators and senior pensions administrators.
- Support the Client Executive team and attend client meetings or new business pitches when required.
- Liaise with scheme members via email, phone, and letters, ensuring clear and professional communication.
- Manage cashflows, investments, disinvestments, and invoices.
- Collaborate with team members and build strong relationships with supporting teams.
- Assist the Team Leader and deputise when needed.
About You
- At least 5 years’ experience in administering DB, DC, or Hybrid pension schemes.
- Achieved or currently studying towards the Pension Management Institute’s CPC qualification.
- Experience in managing or mentoring team members.
- Strong analytical skills with a logical approach to problem-solving.
- Ability to explain complex calculations in simple terms.
- Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
- Proficient in Microsoft Office and able to process data accurately.
- A team player with strong prioritisation skills to meet deadlines and disclosure requirements.
Compensation and benefits
On top of a competitive salary, great teams and exciting career opportunities, we also offer a wide range of benefits.
Below are the minimum core benefits you’ll get, depending on your job level these benefits may improve:
- Minimum of 25 days holiday, plus bank holidays, and the option to ‘buy’ extra days
- Defined contribution pension scheme, which Gallagher will also contribute to
- Life insurance, which will pay 4x your basic annual salary, which you can top-up to 10x
- Income protection, we’ll cover up to 50% of your annual income, with options to top up
- Health cash plan or Private medical insurance
Other benefits include:
- Three fully paid volunteering days per year
- Employee Stock Purchase plan, offering company shares at a discount
- Share incentive plan, HMRC approved, tax effective, stock purchase plan
- Critical illness cover
- Discounted gym membership, with over 3,000 gyms nationally
- Season ticket loan
- Access to a discounted voucher portal to save money on your weekly shop or next big purchase
- Emergency back-up family care
- And many more…
We value inclusion and diversity
Inclusion and diversity (I&D) is a core part of our business, and it’s embedded into the fabric of our organisation. For more than 95 years, Gallagher has led with a commitment to sustainability and to support the communities where we live and work.
Gallagher embraces our employees’ diverse identities, experiences and talents, allowing us to better serve our clients and communities. We see inclusion as a conscious commitment and diversity as a vital strength. By embracing diversity in all its forms, we live out The Gallagher Way to its fullest.
Gallagher is Disability Confident Committed. We have pledged to make sure our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible, in addition to supporting our existing employees with any long-term health conditions or disabilities.
We understand that applicants may have disabilities, if you do, you may find some parts of the recruitment process more challenging than others. Don’t worry, we’re here to help, however, we can only do this if you let us know.
Should you require reasonable adjustments to your application, please get in touch with . If you’d prefer to speak on the phone, please request a call back, leaving details, so we get in touch.
Our employing entity, Arthur J. Gallagher Services (UK) Limited, is proud to be accredited as a Living Wage employer with the Living Wage Foundation. We are committed to diversity and opportunity for all and are opposed to any form of less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender or gender identity, marital status, civil partnership status, parental status, race, ethnicity, colour, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, religion/ belief, age and those with caring responsibilities.
Gallagher believes that all persons are entitled to equal employment opportunity and prohibits any form of discrimination by its managers, employees, vendors or customers based on race, color, religion, creed, gender (including pregnancy status), sexual orientation, gender identity (which includes transgender and other gender non-conforming individuals), gender expression, hair expression, marital status, parental status, age, national origin, ancestry, dKey skills
AI-extracted from the job advert
Application advice
5 AI-generated recommendations to maximise your chances.
⭐ Lead your CV personal statement with explicit mention of DB, DC, and Hybrid scheme experience, as the advert lists all three as core requirements.
📊 Quantify your portfolio: e.g. 'Administered a portfolio of 8 occupational pension schemes covering 3,200 active members, processing 150+ calculations per month.'
🎯 Highlight your CPC qualification status (achieved or in progress) prominently in your qualifications section — the advert flags this as a key criterion.
🤝 Include a dedicated bullet on mentoring or training junior administrators, as the role explicitly requires experience managing or mentoring team members.
📋 Showcase client-facing experience — reference attendance at client meetings or new business pitches, as the advert specifically calls this out as part of the role.
Suggested CV bullets
3 bullets our AI drafted for this specific advert, mirroring its ATS keywords.
Add these 3 bullets under your most recent experience:
- •Administered a portfolio of 10 DB and DC occupational pension schemes covering 4,500 members, processing over 200 manual and automated calculations per month with a 99.6% accuracy rate.
- •Mentored 4 junior pensions administrators through onboarding and CPC study support, reducing average case resolution time by 18% within 6 months.
- •Managed pensioner payroll for 3 DB schemes totalling £1.2M in monthly payments, implementing a dual-check reconciliation process that eliminated payroll errors over a 12-month period.
Free to copy — tailoring requires a 30-sec CV upload.
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Letter preview — tailored to Appcast Enterprise
Dear Hiring Manager,
Gallagher Benefit Services' reputation for advising organisations on complex pensions strategy is precisely why the Principal Pensions Administrator role in Edinburgh caught my attention. With a portfolio spanning DB, DC, and Hybrid occupational pension schemes, and a clear expectation to mentor administrators and attend client meetings, this position aligns directly with the breadth of experience I have built over the past several years in pensions administration.
My background in administering occupational pension schemes includes processing both automated and manual calculations, managing pensioner payrolls, and handling cashflows and investment transactions across multiple schemes simultaneously. I have supported team leaders, guided junior administrators through complex calculations, and contributed to client-facing meetings — experience that maps closely to the responsibilities outlined in your advert. I am currently progressing towards the Pension Management Institute's CPC qualification, which has deepened my technical grounding across DB and DC frameworks.
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Interview questions
10 questions generated from this advert.
Technical
- ›Walk us through how you would administer a transfer value calculation for a DB scheme member — what steps and checks would you apply?
- ›How do you ensure accuracy when processing both automated and manual pension calculations across a large portfolio of schemes?
- ›Describe your experience managing pensioner payrolls — what controls do you put in place to prevent errors?
- ›How have you managed cashflows, investments, and disinvestments for occupational pension schemes, and what tools did you use?
- ›What is your current progress with the Pension Management Institute's CPC qualification, and how has it informed your day-to-day administration work?
Behavioural
- ›Tell me about a time you identified an error in a pension calculation before it reached a scheme member — what did you do?
- ›Describe a situation where you had to explain a complex pension calculation to a client or scheme member with no technical background.
- ›Give an example of when you deputised for a Team Leader — what challenges did you face and how did you handle them?
- ›Tell me about a time you had to manage competing deadlines across multiple pension schemes simultaneously — how did you prioritise?
- ›Describe a situation where you mentored or trained a junior pensions administrator — what approach did you take and what was the outcome?
STAR answer examples
Model answers using the Situation-Task-Action-Result framework. Adapt to your own experience.
Tell me about a time you identified an error in a pension calculation before it reached a scheme member — what did you do?
Describe a situation where you mentored or trained a junior pensions administrator — what approach did you take and what was the outcome?