Proposed changes to the USS pension scheme

A message from the Loughborough UCU Pensions Rep

Dear colleagues,

You may have already received this information from your UCU department rep, due to its importance we are sending again to all members. Please share this email with any non-members that also may not have received the message through department reps.

Proposed Changes to Your USS Pension

As you know, Universities UK (UUK) – the body which speaks on behalf of universities such as Loughborough – is currently consulting universities about changes to the USS pension scheme. Because these proposed changes are complex, it is not straightforward to understand from the headline proposals how they will affect you.

To help, UCU’s actuarial advisors, First Actuarial, have produced an online modeller which allows you to calculate how UUK’s proposals would affect your income in retirement. For example, the modeller reveals that I personally would have a £5068/year reduction to my income in retirement under these proposals.

If you have a USS pension you are welcome to use this tool, regardless of whether you are a member of UCU:

https://www.ucu.org.uk/ussmodeller

(Note: the modeller appears to work best when using Google Chrome.)

Loughborough UCU strongly encourages you to take this opportunity to understand the implications of the current proposals for you personally.

Background

UUK’s proposals are a result of USS’s 2020 valuation, which was published in March this year. Both UUK and UCU agree that this valuation is flawed. For example, UUK has described USS’s approach as “unreasonable”, “unrealistic”, “incredibly conservative” and “unjustifiable”. Unfortunately, UUK has not persuaded USS to change their valuation method, and instead is proposing to pass the cost onto scheme members in the form of reduced benefits. UCU believes that this is approach is not reasonable.

Best wishes

Matthew Inglis, LUCU Pensions Rep