Update on USS
As you know, in the face of all protest and intelligent argument, next year we will all be converted to a career average salary scheme. You’ll recall also that there will be a ‘defined contribution’ scheme running in tandem, that will begin with contributions from salaries over a certain threshold. The USS still are nowhere near having that element in place, and so the pension scheme next spring will in effect convert to one that nobody has proposed or agreed (albeit moderately better than the one imposed), and this will last for a few months until they can get their ‘defined contribution’ section up and running. For details of how poor a defined contribution scheme is compared to the defined benefits of a career average or final salary scheme, see the second half of this page: You’ll recall that when all this came to light a year ago, it was proposed (as we warned back in 2011) that the final salary pension scheme would be closed and that a career-averaging scheme would be applied for all current and new members to the USS pension scheme. The argument for the necessity of this centred around a calculation, a valuation, misleadingly called … continue reading