Catherwood LibraryILR School

In what must seem a harsh irony to British workers already dealing with the collapse of the final salary pension plans that many worked towards for much of their lives (see WIT's for Nov. 25, 2002, and Sep. 16, 2002), new rules designed to shore up under-funded final salary pension plans ensure that workers will lose much of the value of their pension assets if they try to withdraw from troubled plans before they go under. Promulgated by Britain's Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority (OPRA), the rules free pension plan managers from their previous obligation to calculate the value of the pension assets of members wishing to withdraw, until OPRA releases a new valuation system. The rules have the effect of locking workers into their plans until the implementation of the new valuation system---which will allow managers of plans close to default to cut the asset values of withdrawing workers by up to forty-percent.