Teachers Pension & Deferring State Pension

Oblivion

My wife, who receives a teacher's pension, is of state pensionable age in November but she is contemplating deferring it until after the new tax year starts in April 2016. Normally at SPA the Teachers Pension Scheme will calculate pension increases differently with the GMP element being paid by the government in with the state pension.

Does anybody know whether in the case of deferring, the TP will continue to pay all the pensions increase themselves until the state pension is actually claimed?

All I could find on the website was this statement ... 'If you defer your state pension please inform us as this may affect the increases applied to your pension' ... but it rather unhelpfully doesn't explain how it may affect the calculation.

kidmugsy

Oblivion wrote: »

Does anybody know whether in the case of deferring, the TP will continue to pay all the pensions increase themselves until the state pension is actually claimed?

I don't know about the TPS but I do know of one DB scheme that is more generous while you defer your State Pension.

xylophone

This is old and refers to RPI rather than CPI and the NHS Scheme but I would expect that the situation would be similar with TPS.

http://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/Documents/Pensions/GMP_Questions_and_Answers.pdf

Pensions in payment are increased each year in line with the Retail Prices Index(RPI). The scheme pays the increase on the whole pension, including the GMP element, until the GMP comes into force.

This is normally when the member is paid their State Pension but in some cases can be later, for example, when an individual either actively defers or does not claim their State Pension at State Pension age.

Your wife can ring Capita to check?

Oblivion

That's useful and sounds hopeful, thanks xylophone. Yes I think we had better get it confirmed by Capita ... just hope we are lucky to find someone with a single brain cell working in that shambles of an organisation. I'll probably use their web-based email service rather than the phone as I suspect there's more chance of getting a manager to answer the question if a minion can't.