On the go: The Government Actuary’s Department has released an online tool designed to help public sector scheme members better understand their options for benefits and retirement.
The tool was designed to accommodate the impact of the McCloud remedy, which will typically see affected public sector scheme members given a deferred choice underpin, allowing them to pick between the benefits of their legacy scheme or the reformed scheme introduced in 2015.
GAD’s retirement calculator will project and illustrate the benefits people would receive under each scheme when they reach retirement age, with members providing basic detail and the calculator accounting for pay rises and working patterns to produce its result.
It is set to go live in March and will be rolled out to schemes across the public sector over the coming financial year.
GAD actuary John Bayliss, who developed the idea, said: “This is really about helping members understand their benefits and putting this into context. We expect this will sit along with other member information on pension portals.
“Once people answer some quick questions, the system will determine if they will be affected. It then refers pension scheme members to the retirement calculator.”
He added: “This is new for GAD and over the course of the past year we’ve had to learn some elements of how to do this from scratch. We intend to apply this learning in different areas such as live interactive reporting, which we’ve not been able to do before.”
