Welcome!
You may have left the Company or simply opted out of the DB Section of the Fund, but as a result you are now a deferred member. This page provides a reminder of how your pension built up in the Fund while you were an active member, and the menu gives more detail about your options for taking your benefits.
While you were an active member of the Fund, you built up a pension that was linked to:
- Your Final Pensionable Salary and the number of years you were an active member of the DB Section (i.e., paying in contributions)
- Whether your membership was at the Higher Level or Lower Level, which determines the accrual rate (the rate at which your pension built up).
Accrual rate
(60ths or 90ths)*
Final Pensionable Salary
=A guaranteed income for life
A tax-free cash lump sum (optional)
*Please note that other accrual rates may apply under the Fund Rules depending on when you were in Pensionable Service and whether you transferred into the Fund from another pension arrangement. For information as to whether these different accrual rates apply to you, please contact the Fund administrator.
When you left service (stopped being an active member of the DB Section), we worked out your pension based on the above and you would have received a statement setting out the details of your deferred pension. Some members may have switched between Higher Level and Lower Level during their membership, and this would have been reflected in the pension calculations that were carried out at the time. In the years since you left, your deferred pension has continued to receive annual increases to help offset the effect of rising prices.
A new option: bridging pension
Deferred members now have the option at retirement to take a ‘bridging pension’. This is where you take a higher pension from the date you retire up until the date you are due to receive your State Pension. When your State Pension comes into payment, your pension drops back down – so the overall effect is that you have a smoother total pension income during retirement.
Find out more in the section on Your retirement journey.
New rules on transfers
Due to concerns about the increase in pension scams, the Pensions Regulator has introduced new procedures for processing pension transfers, giving powers to pension scheme trustees to intervene where a transfer looks suspicious. The new regulations include checks to see if transfers meet various conditions by introducing a system of red and amber flags. If there are red flags, any statutory right to transfer falls away and the Trustee can stop the transfer. If there are amber flags, the member must get guidance from MoneyHelper before the transfer can go ahead. MoneyHelper is a Government service that provides free and impartial pension guidance.
You may also have paid additional voluntary contributions (AVCs) or participated in Bonus Choice as a way of building up an extra pot of money for retirement. If you have an AVC and/or Bonus Choice account, you will receive annual statements from the investment provider, Fidelity International, updating you on the current value of these savings.
Your AVC and/or Bonus Choice account is invested with the aim of helping it grow. You can log into PlanViewer at any time to review your investments and check what expected retirement age we have on record for you. If you’ve lost your login details, please contact Fidelity International on 0800 3 68 68 68 or email pensions.service@fil.com
If you didn’t make an investment choice when you set up your AVC account, you will be invested in the Roche Lifestyle Strategy Targeting Cash. This is an automatic investment strategy that assumes you will want to take your AVCs as cash. You can select a different investment at any time through PlanViewer.
The default investment option for your Bonus Choice contributions is different to the one used for AVCs. You have the flexibility to change how your Bonus Choice payment is invested each year; it does not have to match the strategy that you use for contributions directed to your AVC account. You can find more details in the Bonus Choice guide.