Pensions - Articles - UK pension deficit remains level masking drops

 New figures released today from PwC’s Skyval Index show the deficit of UK defined benefit (DB) pension funds stand at £230bn at the end of November 2018, in line with the deficit at the previous month end.
 
 PwC’s Skyval Index, based on the Skyval platform used by pension funds, provides an aggregate health check of the UK’s c.5,600 corporate DB pension funds. The current Skyval Index figures, based on the 'gilts plus' method widely used by scheme actuaries, are:

 Assets           Liability target     Deficit
 £1,570bn        £1,800bn               £230bn
 
 Steven Dicker, PwC’s chief actuary, said: “While the deficit of the UK pension schemes remained unchanged over November, this masks a drop of some £20bn in both assets and liabilities, which has been driven predominantly by a rise in gilt yields over the month. The Index is based on the most widely used approach by scheme actuaries for setting discount rates - gilt yields plus a margin - and these figures show the inherent volatility of this method from month to month.”