Will there be an increase in ETs?
 

Everyone knows that the longer you serve the richer you are in your shorter retirement; that’s a given.
What do you guys think will happen once the calculator is up and running?
if you are somewhat better off moving back to your old scheme, is it the final part of the decision to leave? Plenty of talk about the pension and the money, but not so much on the quality of life and new challenges out there.
I ask because I had coffee with two fanatical lifers today, and both are changed people… they want figures to see if their guesstimates are close. Two institutionalised individuals have surprised me beyond belief. PAS pensions, low/ no mortgages and a thirst to live their lives.
We’re all different, but curious to know if they’re one offs or is the new calculator going to crash in the first 5 minutes.

For anyone that can give a best guess ( I'm going to wait for calculator, I'm joining pension society, will get formal calculation soon etc)

Joined mid 99 and should be leaving around December 22.

Stay on AFPS75 and get around 22 years plus a little on "2022" or get around 16 years on Afps75 and 7 on 2015?

Pas Flt Lt since around 2016....

You can use the current AFPS calculator to work out the second option, as that's currently the default position.

For the first option, the AFPS 75 portion can be worked out from the AFPS75 pension code tables:

Officers retired pay & lump sum
OF2 with 23 years (mid-99 to mid-2022) = £18769
PAS supplement
6 years PAS x 365 days x £1.363 per day = £2985

Total AFPS75 immediate pension = £21,754 pa
Multiply by 3 for lump sum = £65,262

For the next bit there is no "AFPS22", it's just AFPS15 with a later start. Your deferred AFPS15 pension will be 2.1% of the salary you earn in the few months between the changeover date and your exit. Your additional tax free lump sum will be 2.25 times that. You will get an EDP instead of the pension until you're 60; it's about 1/3rd of the deferred pension.

Your choice probably depends when you want the money. You might get more per year after age 60 if you switch to AFPS15 in 2015, but then you'll probably get less in the meantime due to the abating effect of the AFPS15 EDP. See what the calculator says.

I agree Easy Street :ok:

I just did a rough AFPS75/15 calculation on the calculator out of interest for the rough timeline that 3 bladed beast provided and it gives:

£18.8k combined IPP and EDP
£70k tax free lump sum
A pension of £26k at State Pension Age (valued at 2021 worth)

So, for some that may be more attractive than the pure AFPS75 that you calculated. You can also inversely commute the £26.5k of the tax free lump sum generated by AFPS15 to generate another £5.8k of EDP to give a revised figure of:

£24.6k combined IPP and EDP
£43.5k tax free lump sum
A pension of £26k at State Pension Age

Which for some may be better again.

A lot of people bleat and whine about AFPS15, when they really haven’t done the maths properly. It’s still a damned good deal!!!

I saw some bad news today, the McCloud Calculator will not be out until early 2022. It’s taking a while to get it right. It’s not surprising really as there have been some significant pay and condition changes over the past 6 years - PAY16, NEM, PAS Level changes, etc…etc…

Does this mean we still have to wait to submit our choice? I'm ready to pick right now.

sounds like two fanatical ‘lifers’ who are now not so fanatical after seeing the real figures - usually means the chiselers who are better off staying in

Delay to new calculator
 

Sounds like the updated calculator is delayed til March at the earliest.

Any news on this?

CS
 

I think the belief at HQ is that nobody would dare leave the military during COVID so nobody cares enough about their pension to bother with forecasts. We’re all just lucky to have a job and should be grateful.

BV

(I’m not usually so cynical and critical but over the pensions issue I feel the MOD have been an absolute disgrace).

Bob Viking

I agree that this has been a total cluster, but the calculator is going to be quite complicated (lots of combinations of different circumstances) and will need a lot of Beta testing before going live. I guess the last thing they need to have is a calculator that gives out the wrong figures and opens up a new challenge?

Has anyone had an update on this yet?
I understood that the aspiration was to be starting to resolve the issue by March 2022?

Have a look at the Forces Pension Society site. There are some good updates on there, I think what you want is there, may need to go back to 1 Dec 21.

The latest they are allowed to have the solution out is Oct 23. I have no illusion that they will finish the job earlier. Latest update was that the updated calculator publication has been delayed.

Blue Sky Thinking
 

As I sit here on my sun lounger I had a random thought. I wondered how much the MOD is paying for a new online pension calculator to work out the post-McCloud benefits for individuals. It seems to be very hard since it is taking an awfully long time which probably means it is awfully expensive.

I realise there are many thousands of affected individuals and many, unique circumstances.

There are people who are able to calculate the benefits manually though. Any well trained accountant could do similar with access to the correct information.

So what if we took a bunch of recent maths graduates and offered them a decent salary to take an individual case load and work the pensions payments out manually?

A recent graduate might think an annual salary of £40,000 is pretty awesome. Every £1,000,000 would get 25 such graduates for a year at a time. They could each handle dozens of cases a day probably.

I’m willing to bet we have invested many millions of £’s into the calculator already. Couldn’t we just save a lot of time and money and even create some well paid jobs to do it mandraulically? We could then actually provide the many thousands of veterans and currently serving individuals who are trying to make life decisions based on their pensions with the correct information to do it?

I’m sure it’s more complicated than I’m making out but I still fail to see why we are waiting years for a calculator when the information and expertise is there to have done it already.

Anyway, back to my book.

BV

My understanding is that there are several policy questions - across all pension schemes - that are “open”.

I sense that there are no easy answers, and whatever process is chosen will result in some being better off, and others worse off.

AtG
 

I understand that. But on the issue of producing a pension forecast of the various schemes for each individual it’s just a matter of maths. A GCSE student could do that with the correct training.

BV

Bob I think what Alfred is referring to is how ‘interpreting’ policy one way or another could result in significant savings. Significant enough to ride out the outrage bus!

If that proves so then only when results of every interpretation option are analysed will a decision be made. It reminds me of the FRI3 rollout.

In short the FRI3 offer was have cash if you have an IPP between these dates. The key being the use of IPP.

What ‘they’ forgot was the not insignificant number of SSC commissions who had transferred to PC after the switch to 40/20. They all had a 16 year IPP in the window but not an exit date.

Initial interpretation was off you jog chancers, until the desperate need for aircrew arose which was when the ‘interpretation’ changed.

All in the detail and what you can legally get away with.

it still makes me laugh at how it was genuinely considered moral to ‘interpret’ the definition of IPP but there you go.

Forewarned is forearmed!