It is March 2021, and once again USS pension members have been told there is a ‘deficit’ in the valuation of the scheme. USS are planning further contribution increases, going up from 30% of salary (combined total of employer and employee contributions) to potentially 56%, in order to cover this ‘deficit’. This is clearly unaffordable for both members and employers, and would tend to push early career and lower paid staff to opt out of the pension scheme altogether, thus gradually killing what is currently a perfectly healthy pension scheme. A ‘deficit’ is not an amount of missing money (in fact, the pension scheme funds increased in value year on year this last decade and currently stands just short of £80bn)1 but is instead a calculation of what would be needed in extreme circumstances to ensure payment of all pensions going out now and of those to be paid to people in the future. That calculation makes a set of assumptions about things like future salary levels and stock market growth of assets, so different sets of assumptions can create different results. The 2014 valuation, for example, assumed salary growth of 16% over four years (It was closer to 6%). … Read more