The importance of an up-to-date Expression of Wish form Life doesn’t always follow a set path, and you may find your personal life changes dramatically over a short period of time. You may have completed an Expression of Wish form (sometimes called a nomination form) when you first joined the Scheme and then have forgotten all about it. But do you really want the wrong person to get your death benefits, should the worst happen? For example, if you’ve named an ex-partner as your beneficiary, then the Trustee would need to consider them as a person to pay benefits to in the event of your death. If you’re unmarried and die without a completed Expression of Wish, the Trustee may consider paying a ‘discretionary’ benefit to a partner, where this is permitted under the Scheme Rules, but to do this the Trustee is obliged to ask for a lot of information at what can be a very sensitive time. The Trustee will have to ask for details of your partner’s financial position and evidence of shared income and expenses etc, so that it can properly assess whether that person is entitled to any benefit. It’s easy to update your Expression of Wish through the member portal, which will help the Trustee pay any benefits due on your death quickly and efficiently: www.buckhrsolutions.co.uk/utc
GMP equalisation & rectification Guaranteed Minimum Pensions (GMPs) were the statutory minimum amounts that had to be paid to a person if they were a member of a scheme that was contracted out of the old State Earnings-Related Pension Scheme (SERPS). Most of the legacy pension schemes that merged in 2009 to form what is now known as the UTC (UK) Pension Scheme were contracted out, so if your membership dates back to before 1997, you may have a GMP element within your pension. In recent years, there have been a number of workstreams relating to GMP records in the Scheme. One of these is called GMP rectification , and it involves the administrator checking that the GMP records held by the Scheme match those held by HMRC. Where there is a discrepancy, members will receive a top-up payment (if the process shows they’ve been underpaid). If they’ve been overpaid, the Trustee has agreed not to reduce their pension payments but to adjust future increases to ensure they receive the correct level in future. Members of the non-Goodrich Sections of the Scheme had their GMPs rectified on 1 September 2024, where applicable, when top-up payments were made.
For members of the Goodrich Section, the Trustee is currently working with Gallagher to implement GMP rectification, and this is likely to take place towards the end of 2025/in early 2026. GMP equalisation is then anticipated to follow for the entire Scheme in the second half of 2026. GMP equalisation is a different issue and has arisen because, historically, GMPs were accrued at different rates for men and women and were payable at different ages, reflecting the different State pension ages for men and women at the time. A High Court ruling in 2018 found that there should be no discrimination between male and female members in calculating their GMPs. Therefore, the Trustee is now obliged to ‘equalise’ these GMP benefits for men and women. This has been a very long process, not only because the pensions industry had to wait for guidance from the government on how these benefits should be equalised, but also because the calculations themselves are very complex. Some members may be due a top-up to their pension, but we expect that this is likely to be relatively small. The Scheme administrator will write to affected members in due course.
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