On the go: January saw a significant in improvement in the funding level of the UK’s 5,450 defined benefit pension schemes.
The aggregate deficit dropped by £80bn to £210bn at the end of January 2019 compared with the previous month end.
The research from PwC showed liabilities now stand at £1,800bn with assets at £1,590bn.
PwC’s estimate is based on the 'gilts plus' method widely used by scheme actuaries and publicly available data of UK DB pension funds, including from the Pensions Protection Fund’s dataset.
Commenting on the data, Steven Dicker, PwC’s chief actuary, said: “The reduction in the deficit is largely attributed to the adoption of a new dataset – as published in the 2018 PPF Purple Book, which shows the number of defined benefit schemes has reduced to 5,450. Positive asset performance over the month also helped to boost the funding level."
