Eversheds Sutherland (International) LLP

This Practice Note covers the considerations relevant to trustees and employers before deciding whether to pay a surplus in an occupational pension scheme to the employer (ie an authorised surplus payment) on a scheme wind-up, together with the requirements to satisfy when making such a payment under the Pensions Act 1995, s 76.

This Practice Note focuses on sectionalised schemes (also known as segregated schemes), including what they are, their tax treatment and their legislative treatment for the purposes of the statutory funding regime, the section 75 regime and the Pension Protection Fund regime. This Practice Note also looks at the consequences of winding up a sectionalised scheme.

This Practice Note looks at how to determine members’ normal pension age for the purposes of the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) (eg in order to ascertain the date from which PPF compensation will be paid to an individual and the level of that compensation under the pension compensation provisions of the Pensions Act 2004, Sch 7) in relation to defined benefit (DB) and hybrid occupational pension schemes.

This Practice Note looks at how trustees of a defined benefit (DB) occupational pension scheme and a hybrid occupational pension scheme can identify the admissible rules of the scheme for the purposes of operating a scheme and paying benefits to members during a Pension Protection Fund (PPF) assessment period.

This Practice Note looks at the definition of an ‘employer’ for the purpose of entry of an eligible scheme into the Pension Protection Fund (PPF), and the extension of that definition in relation to single and multi- employer schemes (or sections).