Would you like a better balance sheet? - LGPS Bulletin

by Alistair Russell-Smith   •  
Blog

It’s coming up to that time of year when participants in LGPS will be preparing for their year end accounting disclosures under FRS 102. The norm is that the Fund advisers provide an indicative set of assumptions, these receive a cursory glance, you await the results of your report at some time around May and then have this incorporated in your accounts. Simple….but wait! Did you realise that it is the Directors /Charity Trustees who have responsibility for these disclosure assumptions and not the Fund actuary?  You can therefore chose to use a different set of assumptions if those are more suitable for you and bearing in mind that one set of global assumptions issued by the Fund actuary can’t be specific to each employer, this is probably something worth considering, especially if your balance sheet position is important. You may well be surprised by just how much of a difference small changes in the assumptions can make to your liabilities and therefore your deficit and balance sheet position. I would therefore encourage employers already disclosing an LGPS pension liability to consider the assumptions used and whether or not they are appropriate. The table below shows the potential impact of varying the assumptions used to calculate the FRS 102 liability.  Please note this will vary for each scheme and the figures below are provided as an example only.

Change in assumption Change in liability
+0.1% p.a. discount rate -2%
-0.1% p.a. inflation -2%
-0.5% p.a. salary increases -1%

Indicative results showing the impact on deficit and balance sheet position are shown below.

‘Standard’ assumptions £000 Organisation specific assumptions £000
Assets 2,000 2,000
Liabilities 3,000 2,850
Deficit 1,000 850

So a small change of 2% in liabilities as in this case could reduce the deficit by 15% and improve the balance sheet position by £159,000. As you can see therefore, for organisations participating in LGPS, it is well worth considering the use of bespoke assumptions, particularly if you are looking to manage your balance sheet. If you would like an indication of how changes could have impacted your 2017 disclosures we would be happy to provide these. If you are considering a change, you need to consider this now as Funds usually require some advance notice that a different process will be used. We provide this service for many of our clients so don’t hesitate to contact us if you need more information.

Further reading

Is your DB scheme an asset rather than a liability?

Blog
by Alistair Russell-Smith   •  

2024 Charity Defined Benefit Pensions Benchmarking Report

Blog
by Alistair Russell-Smith   •  

Spring Budget 2024 – What does it mean for pensions?

Blog
by Angela Burns   •  

More Insights?