Who will save the final salary pension schemes?
As the stock market continues to trawl around the 4,000 level there are growing concerns that the final salary pension scheme sector may never recover from recent falls. These are the scheme where your pension upon retirement is calculated using your final salary and the time you have served with your employer. It has nothing to do with investment returns and there are real concerns that we will see more and more schemes move into deficit.
This places great pressure on the sponsoring companies many of whom are struggling to make ends meet themselves and cannot afford to top up their pension scheme. While pension schemes are protected by law there is very little that the authorities can do if there is no money available to top it up to the fully funded level. There are grave concerns that more and more companies will be forced to close down and call it a day because of the ever increasing pressure of business and their pension fund obligations.
As ever the authorities have done very little to assist the matter and the longer it drags on the worse the situation will become. Yet again it seems as though pensioners will be the ones who miss out!
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