Members may be aware of the recent volatility in financial markets and be wondering if there are any implications for the distribution of remaining Plan assets to eligible members as outlined in our announcement ‘Update September 2022 – next steps’.
We have of course already secured benefits with the vast majority of the overall Plan assets (over 98%) in transactions which occurred in 2018 and 2020. These were mainly secured with Legal & General, but some members were able to take transfers to alternative providers and some were able to choose lump sum payments.
In terms of the relatively small residual funds, we had already taken steps to sell some government bonds and hold cash instead. This does not mean that we are fully isolated against market movements because, as for nearly all pension schemes, we still hold some government bonds whose value will have fallen recently.