Actuary and employee benefits company Towers Watson is warning that many defined benefit pension schemes with actuarial valuations this Spring will find that their plans to repair deficits have been blown off course.
The company says that in most schemes, employers and trustees reach a funding agreement once every three years, with valuation dates most commonly falling in late March or early April. Towers Watson says that, for a typical scheme with a March/April 2015 valuation:

• The contributions being paid by the employer would have to rise by around 30% to get the scheme back on course to clear its deficit by the date previously agreed with pension scheme trustees.
• Alternatively, if contributions stay the same, the date by which the plan would be fully funded against its statutory target would have to be pushed back by around two years.

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Graham McLean, head of funding at Towers Watson, said: "New snapshots of scheme funding positions are not going to look pretty. Over the past three years, investments have performed strongly but lower bond yields have increased liabilities.

"Typically, cash deficits will be about where they were three years ago: the significant sums that employers have paid into their pension schemes have only allowed them to tread water. However, the situation will vary a lot from scheme to scheme. Things won't be as bad where the scheme was well hedged against falls in interest rates or where the original plan was to pay off the deficit quickly.

"Some trustees will succeed in getting employers to up their contributions. However, many scheme sponsors will feel emboldened to resist this, noting that the Pensions Regulator has been told to 'minimise any adverse impact on the sustainable growth of an employer' when it polices funding agreements. Often, contributions may stay about where they are, with the date when the scheme is due to be fully funded being pushed back.

"Just as falling yields have made the deficit problem worse, rising yields could help it go away. As no one can be certain about what will happen, employers may try to keep cash contributions down for fear of overpaying while offering the scheme alternative security – such as money in an escrow account – in case things don't go as they hope."

Towers Watson's analysis looked at a model scheme that was 80% funded at the end of March 2012 and where the employer and trustees had agreed a 10-year recovery period.