Stephen Richards

Head of pensions advisory

A big scheme specialist, Stephen advises employers, trustees, and master trusts on all types of pensions issues. He has a commercial style on strategic issues and brings a responsive approach on day to day matters. With the ability to present complex ideas in a simple way, Stephen has helped a variety of clients with tricky pensions issues, from the trustees of global banks to UK manufacturers.

Stephen joined Stephenson Harwood from Allen and Overy to complement our strong and growing pensions team. As a rising star in pensions law, Stephen further enhances the reputation of the firm's pension practice.

He is an expert on pensions in the banking sector, large pension schemes, Pensions Regulator issues and master trusts. Stephen has experience on major strategic projects including advising on the acquisition of a major master trust provider and the largest company contribution made to a pension scheme to date. Stephen is also a trustee so he understands what trustees need from their advisers. Stephen established the Pensions Innovation Café, and likes to present advice in a modern, user friendly way.

Stephen‘s recent experience includes advising on multiple transfers to DC master trusts and the trustees of several of the UK's major pension schemes on all day to day legal issues. He also gave strategic advice on major Pensions Regulatory issues for a FTSE 100 company as well as to a global telecoms company on world-wide pensions issues.

 

 

Stephen Richards is a very charismatic and able lawyer. He seems to be a real rainmaker – since joining the firm they have picked up some very big clients.

The Legal 500 UK 2020
Insights

VAT recovery on pension costs

On 18 June 2025, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) changed its policy on the recovery of VAT on investment costs. Effective immediately, employers can now treat all VAT incurred on investment management services for occupational pension schemes as their own input tax and reclaim it, in line with standard input tax rules.

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Pension Schemes Bill published

On 5 June, the Government published the Pension Schemes Bill. The Bill aims to tackle fragmentation, boost investment, increase saver returns, address waste across the defined contribution (DC) workplace pensions market and the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) and allow additional flexibility for the extraction of a DB surplus.

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Pensions update: major Virgin Media development

The Government has announced that it will introduce a legislative 'fix' to give pension schemes the ability to retrospectively obtain written actuarial confirmation that historic benefit changes met the necessary standards.

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