Below you can find some details how these changes can be handled within JCS.
1/ From April 2015, the accrual rate will change to 1/54th for each year of service, which differs from the 1995 and 2008 rates.
Occupational Defined Benefit Schemes in JCS will assume an accrual rate of 1/60th for each year of service, however this can be overridden within the policy to be anything from 1/15th to 1/120th per year of service. This accrual rate is then used in any calculations of future pension benefits/income. You can change this in the "Accrual Rates: Full Pension" field.
2/ Benefits are planned to increase by CPI + 1.5%
JCS allows you to specify an indexation rate on benefits, it currently allows RPI and AEI as indexation rates, or you can override and put a specific rate in such as 2.4% The RPI and AEI rates can be set from within user preferences. For more information on how these rates are used in various areas of JCS, feel free to talk to tech support. We may at some time include CPI as an indexation rate, but it is unlikely that we will include CPI + 1.5% as it is an arbitrary figure. That is unless we get significant feedback that our users would want this.
3/ Pensionable salary will be based on a Career Average Revalued Earnings (CARE) scheme.
JCS requires a pensionable salary to be entered on a defined benefit scheme in order to calculate any benefits. The value for this should be available to members at which it can be entered into JCS, and it will not matter that it is an average salary rather than a final salary, the calculations will still be the same.
