Originally Posted by
Lima Juliet
VinRouge
So, I feel you may have made a very unsound decision if you left because you thought that pensions would be better in civilian life - the only way they would be better would be if you were paid about 60% more than your pensionable salary was in the Service.
Of course that decision wasn’t purely based upon a single metric, life is never that simple. However, the taste of the Kool Aid we were getting fed, together with the bitter taste that was left after the seniors who had the moral duty to resign over the AFPS15 change, instead decided to sign up to grandfather rights looking after them and their own was a major factor. It came across somewhat as the seniors getting their bellies tickled and damn the rest of us.
So was the lack of a pay rise for a decade, as well as Royal protections removed from AFPS when the 15 change happened pretty much was a final nail in the coffin.
Since then, the discount rate has been changed, with impacts to the affordability of the scheme. And whilst you are right, they can’t take away accrued benefits, being part of a scheme that doesn’t permit you to realise those benefits until you have served a defined period on a significantly deteriorated accrual rate, through either TOS or pension point is downright unfair in the extreme. A fair way of dealing with the situation would have been to allow personnel to exit prior to IPP, but not pay out until the same time frame to IPP thereby allowing accrual externally whilst preserving pension rights for what was earned. Was that even considered? Nope. But I bet MoD/HMG wouldn’t now be in the dwang they are reference grandfather rights if they had. Would also be very interested to see what % of salary 90K is for an OF5 though.