|
|
Webb said that those results showed the "extremely high cost" the Commission's plans would place on UK defined benefit (DB) pension schemes. Webb urged Brussels to drop its plans to impose Solvency II-style rules on DB pension schemes.
Consultancy Towers Watson argued that going ahead with new Europe-wide rules for calculating pension deficits would only add £150 billion to funding targets for UK scheme.
The UK's Pensions Regulator (TPR) also insisted that, whatever the outcome, it would continue to work with EIOPA, the UK government and stakeholder groups to ensure that the challenges facing DB schemes and sponsors in the UK were "understood and recognised" by the EU.
Under the worst-case scenario, IORPs taking part in the QIS exercise were asked to include all types of pension benefits and to take into account ex post benefit reductions, include a risk margin based on the cost-of-capital concept, include sponsor support and pension protection schemes as an asset on the balance sheet. By way of comparison, under the upper-bound and the lower-bound scenarios, IORPs were asked to follow the same requirements but needed to use a different basic risk-free interest rate curve and different approaches towards the inclusion of mixed benefits and risk margins.
Full article (IPE subscription required)