DB Pension Buyout

Pat38493

Marcon said:

Pat38493 said:

Marcon said:

What is true of a buy out is that almost all trustee discretions are removed, and benefits are 'coded' as far as possible to provide certainty and simplicity for all parties, not least the insurer who is taking on the liabilities.

Well if this is true, I will be interested to see if Aviva provides some kind of online interface where you can get retirement predictions on demand for your policy - if the rules are coded, then this should mean that it is possible to program a screen which allows me to get my pension estimate for any given retirement date on demand.

Somehow, I doubt this will be possible though and I will still have to put in an application and wait weeks or months to get one.

Although coding the rules doesn't mean they can predict inflation (would be great if it did!), it's possible there may be some sort of online 'estimator', albeit one which will be hedged around with a whole load of caveats to take account of the unknowns. That won't be something the trustees can tell you until much nearer the time of the buy out - or more likely Aviva will confirm after the buyout. The larger the scheme, the greater the chance of such a feature being automated and available to members, but it will take time, so don't expect it to appear miraculously as a feature the day after buyout is accomplished.

Yes - I have actually received such forward estimates before and I believe they stated that they were assuming 2.5% inflation for future years not yet known.  However, in those cases I had to wait several months to receive the estimate after requesting it.