wife's pension wording mystery

sillysod1

Hello everyone. I wonder if you can give me some advice on my wife's company pension which she will be taking early, with 20%reduction, next month. Her date of leaving her job was 7/4/2009 and the paperwork at the time showed the GMP plus excess pension at that date. The GMP on her recent statement was revalued correctly but the excess is giving me concern.
The leaving statement states " The Deferred Pension in respect of all pensionable service in excess of the GMP shown on the Statement will be increased for each complete year from the date of your leaving to your Retirement Date, by the lesser of 5% per annum or the increase in the Retail Price Index."
I took this to mean that on the anniversary of her DOL the pension would be revalued by the ONS inflation figure each April. Bearing in mind the change to CPI the following year, using figs. from the ONS web page for inflation at each April, this works out to an over 21% increase. However, the statement she just received showed an increase of only 14.6% which is the figure taken from the "Occupational Pensions ( Revaluation ) Order 2016 " which uses the inflation figure published for each September for the whole year and includes a dip into negative inflation for RPI in Sep. 2009.
My question to you is, do the Trustees have to abide by the initial DOL wording as I interpret it, or can they simply use the revaluation order to facilitate paying her the lesser amount. Thank you all in anticipation.
Kind Regards,
Peter

Linton

See here: https://www.pensionsadvisoryservice.org.uk/content/spotlights-files/uploads/RPI_to_CPI_SPOT011_V1.2.pdf

In particular in summary it says that in regards to CPI vs RPI it is the scheme rules that govern what happens, not any explanatory documentation your wife may have been given. If the scheme rules explicitly state RPI then there may be a case, otherwise she is unlikely to get anywhere with a complaint.

xylophone

https://www.barnett-waddingham.co.uk/comment-insight/blog/2012/07/24/revaluation-for-early-leavers/

sillysod1

Thanks for the replies. It's not the RPI vs CPI that bothers me - it's whether they will revalue using RPI/CPI at each April DOL anniversary which results in a 21% increase or whether they can insist on using the "Occupational Pensions ( Revaluation ) Order 2016 " which revalues each September, resulting in an increase of only 14.6%.