Sarah Swift

Practice Areas

Sarah is a Partner with extensive experience in pensions law. She advises both trustees and employers of large, complex DB and DC schemes.

Sarah qualified into pensions law in 1999 and worked at a Magic Circle firm until joining Eversheds Sutherland as a Partner in 2012. Sarah advises on all aspects of pensions law and is a well-established figure in the pensions industry. Sarah splits her work pretty equally between trustee and employer clients. The common theme is that the pension schemes involved tend to be large (multibillion-pound) and complex occupational schemes in the private sector, many of which were set up decades ago.

Sarah’s work has included advising on closures to accrual, corporate reorganizations and interaction with The Pensions Regulator, pension scheme mergers, liability management exercises and transfers to master-trusts. Most recently, Sarah has worked with a client to put in place a funding, security and investment framework agreement for a £1bn-plus pension scheme, advised on a complicated 4-way pension scheme merger, closure exercise and buy-in all of which completed within a 3-month window and is advising on several ongoing GMP equalization and conversion exercises. Sarah is also developing a keen interest in collective defined contribution schemes as the potential new “third way” for pension saving in the UK from later in 2022.

Sarah is used to working closely with lawyers in other disciplines including investment, banking, data protection and cyber risk in order to give clients joined-up advice where input from these areas is needed.

Within Eversheds Sutherland, Sarah heads up the national pensions team's Quality & Risk function ensuring that good governance and technical excellence is embedded in the culture.

Sarah is a collaborative lawyer who likes working with clients and their other advisers as well as those in her team to achieve practical, effective solutions to issues. In the 2021 edition of Chambers & Partners she was praised by clients as being “excellent and well-informed.”

She is also a passionate advocate for working mothers and dog-owners, and in her spare time when not dog-walking she loves the cinema.

Education