Further blow for final salary pension schemes
It has been revealed that the UK's 200 largest privately sponsored pension schemes are set to show an accumulated deficit of around £93 million at the end of March 2010 in what is another bitter blow for the UK private pension sector. Despite the fact that pension fund assets have increased by over £118 billion over the last year, there has been an increase in accounting liabilities in the region of £175 billion. As a consequence we are set to see more and more final salary pension schemes closed down in the private sector despite the fact that the public sector pensions arrangements are set to continue as normal.
The UK pension industry has been in a downward spiral for many years now with many blaming Gordon Brown for introducing tax charges to pension schemes as a means of gaining more income for the UK government. Not only has this taken money from pension schemes on an annual basis but there is also less money to invest longer-term, let alone any potential profit on money which would have been reinvested under the old tax regime.
The public sector and private sector pension arrangements are something of a hot topic in the run up to the general election with more and more taxpayer income going towards public sector pension scheme arrangements.
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