State Street and PensionsFirst Analytics (PFA) have joined up to offer defined benefit (DB) pension schemes across the globe a web-based service to enhance the measurement and management of pensions risk.

PFaroe® provides a snapshot of DB plan assets and liabilities on one single platform, which is believed to be unique to the industry. Trustees, advisors and sponsors will have access to detailed cash flow projections and scenario analysis, and allow them to make better-informed and more timely investment and de-risking decisions.

Joe Moody, managing director and global head of liability driven investment at State Street Global Advisors, told Pensions Age: "DB liabilities are one of the biggest unmeasured risks that corporations face.

"This [capability] is something that the industry has been sorely lacking - it would have saved a lot of the pain that we have seen in the last few years."

Moody added that for State Street, it is "great to see the detail underneath the liabilities, and can appreciate when designing strategies exactly what it is doing where. It is powerful for the industry."

Benjamin Reid, chief executive officer of PFA, said: "We have the opportunity to revolutionise the way people analyse DB pensions. You could say we do have fairly lofty ambitions of potentially changing the landscape of DB schemes."

The new strategic alliance, market by State Street's minority equity investment in PFA, will allow State Street to enhance and expand on the services it currently brings to DB plan sponsors.

Reid added that it will also rapidly accelerate PFA's expansion and entry into the US market, which he told Pensions Age can be expected in the third quarter of 2010.

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