Employers Pension Fund

Work to date

The EPF began its work in 2007 by commissioning a survey of HEIs to identify their needs and attitude to change. The resulting Hewitt Report, published in October 2007 reached the following conclusions:

• the sector’s preference to benchmark its provision more closely to the public sector than the private sector;
• that pensions and reward should reflect a changing workforce, rather than favouring a specific career profile;
• that there should be a greater degree of risk sharing between employee members and employer;
• that the sector should work together for cost efficiencies in the delivery of pensions;
• the widespread support for allocating the cost of early retirements to individual institutions;
• that employee members should be prepared to pay more towards the cost of their pension benefits.

Read the full report :   Hewitt Pensions Report

Based on the findings of this report the EPF then considered the possible options for developing a pensions strategy for HE. In a report prepared by Peter Thompson, an independent pensions consultant, the following recommendations were made:

For more details read the full report:   Pension provision in the HE sector

There are a number of schemes which are available to staff working in the sector. These include:

• the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) in England and Wales
• the Northern Ireland Teachers Pension Scheme (NITPS)
• the Scottish Teachers’ Superannuation Scheme (STSS)
• the Local Government Pensions Scheme (LGPS) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, LGPS(S) in Scotland.
• Self Administered Trusts (these are schemes for support staff which operate in many of the pre-92 HEIs, the largest of which is SAUL)
• the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS)
   

Use the highlighted page links for more details on each of the above schemes or go to Pension Schemes.