Member

Now that we have a position so different from the past, with so many schemes now in surplus, would the Government support the idea of mandating the scheme trustees to make sure that they have considered the actuarial advice that could so benefit members? We have a live example of this, whereby the technical actuarial standards TAS 300 were a crucial part of the consideration by the trustees of the Stagecoach scheme, which managed to change the sponsoring employer from Stagecoach to Aberdeen, a big insurer that can underwrite the scheme and has promised to pay an instant increase in member benefits on taking the scheme over and to share all future surpluses, two-thirds with members, with one-third going to Aberdeen. That is a real live example of the new thinking available in the pensions landscape nowadays, which could be so much better for the economy than schemes just looking to buy annuities, which then do not add to member benefits or employer resources or to the productive potential of the economy, which running schemes on could achieve.