Business and Other Briefings
DWP: Minister for Pensions Reform Mike O'Brien has called on trustees to cooperate with measures to speed up Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS) payments to people aged 65 & over. The payment process is to be simplified to get around delays caused by trustees not applying for FAS ‘initial payments’ to top up interim pensions paid by the winding up schemes.
To receive FAS help, trustees of qualifying schemes need to apply for payments, tell the FAS about people who are approaching or over 65 and return information including details on how much pension members had accrued within their scheme.
Where schemes wish to make payments at 80% levels themselves, the FAS unit will support trustees to calculate such payments.
The Government has committed to match any additional funds generated by the Young Review to increase FAS assistance further towards 90% of core expected pension. Options for making better use of the assets in FAS schemes include bulk-buying of annuities or pooling the available assets in one fund.
