University of Reading Employees' Pension Fund (UREPF)

Member Nominated Trustees

The Trustee Board has recently carried out one of its regular reviews of the rules and process for appointing Member Nominated Trustees (MNTs) and a few changes have been agreed. An overview of these changes can be found here - UREPF MNT Rules and Process Changes July 2020 and the full details are available in the UREPF MNT Rules July 2020.

Covid-19 - Is UREPF Affected?

There has been a lot of attention in the media on the financial implications, and specifically the performance of the financial markets, in response to the Covid-19 outbreak. As UREPF is a Defined Benefit scheme, there is no immediate impact on your pension. Any pension entitlement you have under the Fund is guaranteed and does not change if the financial markets underperform.

With regards to Business Continuity, our administrator (Barnett Waddingham) has confirmed that they are well placed to deal with the current situation. They have a number of contingency plans in place to ensure that they are able to continue to administer the Fund as the situation changes. The Pensions Office, together with Barnett Waddingham, will continue to monitor the situation as it develops, and take the appropriate action as necessary.

Should you have any concerns, or need further information, please email the Pensions Office - pensions@reading.ac.uk

About The Scheme

Membership of UREPF in one form or another has been available to eligible employees at the University of Reading since 1938 and currently there are around 280 active members here at Reading. Due to mounting financial pressure on the Fund, the University proposed various pension changes and a consultation with employees and Trade Unions was launched in March 2011. In order to ensure the continued viability of UREPF for existing members, the Fund has been closed to new entrants from 1 August 2011 and the benefit structure changed from a final salary basis to a Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) type basis for service from 1 August 2011. An equality impact assessment of the changes was conducted by the University and can be found here - Equality Impact Assessment for UREPF Changes (PDF - 45KB)

UREPF is still a defined benefit scheme. This means that a member's benefits are determined by their salary rather than being linked to a fund of money they have paid into.

For existing members, pension build up ceased to be linked to final salary after 31 July 2011. On the 31 July 2011 a calculation established pensionable service and final pensionable salary at that date. This element of pension benefit will then be increased each 31 July (starting 31 July 2012) up to the date of leaving service, death or retirement by the increase in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) up to a maxium of 5% a year.

From 1 August 2011 pension benefits build up on a Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) basis. This means that for each year ending 31 July (starting 31 July 2012) members will receive a pension credit based on 1/60th of their pensionable pay in the year. In addition, each 31 July (starting 31 July 2013) the pension credits from previous years will be increased in line with the increase in CPI up to a maximum of 5%.

Contribution rates to UREPF are currently 6.25% of salary for employees and 23.8% for the University. A salary exchange scheme has been introduced by the University as this is a more effective way of paying into the scheme. Further information can be found on the Pensions+ page or in the Benefits+ handbook.

Membership of UREPF provides the following benefits:

a pension for life
the option to take a tax free cash sum on retirement
a tax free lump sum if you die whilst an active member
a pension for your spouse or civil partner or dependant if you die
pensions for eligible children if you die
early payment of retirement benefits if you have to retire due to incapacity
tax relief on the contributions you pay into the scheme

UREPF was contracted-out of the State Second Pension (S2P) with all members of the scheme automatically contracted-out until 5 April 2016. From 6 April 2016, pension schemes are no longer able to contract out of S2P and thus members no longer pay lower National Insurance contributions. Please bear this in mind when reading scheme literature.

Current Documents

Nomination Forms

Previous Newsletters and Funding Statements

If you would like to see any earlier versions of the below documents, please contact the Pensions Team.

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