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Our Business Risk Services team deliver practical and pragmatic solutions that support clients in growing and protecting the inherent value of their businesses.
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We offer a dedicated team of experienced individuals with a focus on successfully executing transactions for corporates and financial institutions. We offer an integrated approach, with our corporate finance specialists working seamlessly with tax and other specialists to ensure that every angle is covered.
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Economic Advisory
Our all-island Economics Advisory team combines expertise in economics and business with a wealth of experience across the public and private sectors.
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Forensic Accounting
We have a different way of doing business by delivering real insight through a combination of technical rigour, commercial experience and intuitive judgment. We take pride in delivering responsive and tailored solutions to all our clients, capitalising on the wealth of experience housed within our Belfast and wider Forensics team
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People and Change Consulting
The Grant Thornton People & Change Consulting practice works with clients on these issues as well as on all aspects of how they attract, retain, engage develop, deploy and lead their people.
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We work with a wide variety of clients and stakeholders such as high street banks, private equity funds, directors, government agencies and creditors to implement solutions which provide the best possible outcomes.
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Technology Consulting
Motivating and assisting our clients to pursue, maintain and secure the benefits of digital solutions is at the core of our Digital Transformation teams' agenda and goals. We work with business leaders to deliver efficient digital strategies and operating models that provide new or enhanced capabilities.
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Corporate and International Tax
Northern Ireland businesses face further challenges as they operate in the only part of the UK that has a land border with a country offering a lower tax rate.
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Employer Solutions
Our team specialises in remuneration and incentive planning and works closely with employers, shareholders and employees to ensure that business strategies are aligned and goals achieved in the most tax efficient, cost-effective manner.
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Global Mobility Services
Grant Thornton Ireland offer a different approach to managing global mobility. We have brought together specialists from our tax, global payroll, people and change and financial accounting teams across Ireland and Northern Ireland, while drawing on the knowledge and insights of our global network of over 143 offices of mobility professionals to provide you with a holistic approach to managing global mobility.
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Our outsourced service provides valued service to over 150 separate PAYE schemes. These ranging from 1 to 1000 employees, working for micro, SME and global employers. The service is supported by the integrated network of tax and global mobility teams and the wider Grant Thornton network delivering a seamless service. Experienced staff deliver a personal service built around your business needs.
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Our Tax Disputes and Investigation team is made up of tax experts and former HMRC investigators who have years of experience in dealing with a variety of tax investigations. Our expertise and insight can guide you through all interactions, keeping your cost at a minimum while allowing you to continue with the day to day running of your business.
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VAT and Indirect Taxes
At Grant Thornton (NI) LLP, our team helps Northern Ireland businesses manage their UK and global indirect tax risks which, as transactional taxes, can quickly become big liabilities.
Pension provision may prove profitable
18 Sep 2019Upon concluding negotiations designed to avert strike action over employment conditions, in February 2019 the Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) took the first steps towards making “collective defined contribution” (CDC) pension schemes a real possibility within UK workplaces.
The adoption of CDC schemes has the potential to herald a new era for pension provision in the UK. Currently pension provision is dominated by traditional “defined benefit” (DB) plans, where all responsibility for building and delivering the employees’ retirement income lies with the employer, and the alternative “defined contribution” (DC) arrangements, in which this responsibility passes to the individual. Whilst the employer would still make set contributions to CDC schemes on behalf of its employees, the mechanisms within CDC schemes allow individual employee pension contributions to be pooled together into a single fund to be managed for the benefit of all members.
Certain features of these schemes may prove enticing to both employer and employee alike. They will provide certainty over contributions for all parties; unless specific guarantees are given from the outset, employers will not have to pay additional shortfall contributions over the lifetime of the scheme – one of the less attractive, and more costly, features of a DB scheme. From an employee’s perspective, this approach shares the risk and rewards of the scheme across all members and aims to provide a greater final pension benefit to members, than they may otherwise achieve on their own.
Conversely, to establish a CDC scheme is not without its pitfalls for both the employer and the employee. From an employer’s perspective, there are considerable costs to be taken into account. – Establishing and monitoring a new scheme may prove expensive, particularly as the scheme will require both experienced advisers and trustees to ensure its smooth implementation, proper governance, and future operation. For the employee, there are concerns surrounding the stability and growth of these schemes, particularly in the face of the ongoing evolution of the modern day workforce. As such, it has been suggested that adoption of CDC schemes may only be suitable within the largest and most stable companies.
Whilst CDC schemes may be more commonplace in both the Netherlands and Denmark, as Brexit continues to consume the government’s legislative agenda resulting in further delays to long-awaited pension reform, it could be some time before they are more widely introduced in the UK. However, experts counsel against discounting them altogether, noting that if the appropriate legal and governance framework can be put in place, CDC schemes may yet become a valuable “third way” within the sphere of workplace pensions.