It is now 20 years since a Joint Working Party of the Institute and Faculty, comprising Messrs Spratling, Bacon and Bromfield, presented a paper (J.I.A. 83, Part III) on the results of its investigation into the actuarial and other problems arising in connexion with the transferability of pension rights.

That paper and the discussions on it at the Faculty and Institute were concerned mainly with the general principle involved in maintaining or ‘preserving’ the rights of individual members of occupational pension schemes who changed employment. This could be achieved either:

(i) through the scheme of the employer the member was leaving by providing what they called ‘cold storage benefits’ (and which we refer to in this paper as preserved benefits) or

(ii) through the scheme of the employer which he was joining by means of a transfer value payment to that scheme from the former scheme.