The Pensions Regulator has published its latest snapshot of occupational trust-based defined contribution (DC) pensions in the UK.
This year’s release covers around 40,000 DC schemes and includes data such as memberships and assets spanning the past five years - 2009 to 2013 (all figures as of 31 December in the relevant year).
View this year's DC trust: a presentation of scheme return data.
The regulator’s head of DC regulation Darran Burton said:
“Automatic enrolment is already having an impact on the DC landscape and we are seeing an increase in the number of members, as well as participating master trusts.
“We recently published our DC code of practice and will be stepping up our work with pension schemes to ensure good practice is embedded across all trust-based schemes during 2014”.
Headline findings:
- There are £30 billion of assets in DC schemes with 12 or more members.
- The number of DC memberships has increased by 14% over the last year, from 2.2 million to 2.6 million.
- The number of DC master trust schemes with 12 or more members has increased by 11% (from 44 to 49), and the membership of such schemes has increased by 50% (from 250,000 to 380,000 members).
- DC memberships now account for 30% of workplace pensions memberships – up from 27% last year.
- The number of schemes has increased by 1%, the first increase since 1997.
- The proportion of members aged 50 or above has remained stable at 24%.
- The average size of pension transfers is £30,000.
- The average pot size at retirement is £25,000.
It is important to note that the data does not fully reflect the volume of new memberships into DC schemes as a result of automatic enrolment - due to the staggered dates that schemes complete their scheme returns to the regulator. But it can be read in conjunction with the regulator’s automatic enrolment publications including its monthly registration reports, which provide the latest membership information as a result of the reforms.
This year’s overview is wider than previous years and includes information on movement of memberships, such as how many members and how much money has left a scheme over the past year, and asset and contribution information for micro schemes (2 to 11 members). Additionally, the regulator has responded to demand from users and has included an online tool which presents the data in the form of charts. Users are able to select the data they wish to view and the tool will create the chart for them.
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