Pensions - Articles - Pension scheme funding and investment, 2013 edition

 The value of assets held in UK funded pensions was £2040.7 billion in 2011 (135% of GDP). Self-administered pension funds, most of which are associated with defined benefit occupational pension schemes, accounted for 71% of the total (Figure 9.1).

 Self-administered pension funds now include insurance-managed funds; they excluded them in the previous publication. On a like-for-like excluded basis, self-administered pension funds account for 66% of assets held in UK pension funds in 2011, up from 55% in 2009.

 The aggregate funding position of schemes in the Pension Protection Fund's 7800 index - funded defined benefit occupational pension schemes, mostly in the private sector - measured on an s179 basis moved from a surplus of £50.1 billion in January 2011 to a deficit of £317.0 billion in May 2012, later moving to a deficit of £201.5 billion in February 2013 (Figure 9.3).

 After falling in 2007 and 2008, total contributions to self-administered pension funds increased rapidly in 2009, 2010 and 2012, mainly because of a rise in employers' ‘special contributions', such as deficit payments (Figures 9.5 and 9.6).

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