Page 60 - Group Insurance and Retirement Benefit IC 83 E- Book

The most practical solution, in his opinion, was to close all existing funds to new

members. The public board should then set up a new fund, or funds, which would
become the standard of superannuation which the board was prepared, or was able, to

provide. Some of the closed funds would be superior, some inferior, to those standards. If
members of the superior funds wished to secure additional benefits, they should meet the

entire cost themselves. Members of the inferior funds should be given an option to
transfer to the new standard scheme as new entrants, paying the contribution for their

attained ages. Any transfer value, or withdrawal benefit, taken over from the old scheme

should be used to purchase past service benefits, on the understanding that no additional
cost for past service benefits would fall on the board. If the board were prepared to be

more generous than the realistic policy which he had outlined, the cost of the more

generous treatment should be calculated by an actuary before the executive decision was
taken, so that the true cost of the benefits might be understood.

His closing words were concerned with interchange arrangements. Under existing
conditions, members of local authority funds could move from local authority to local

authority taking their past service rights with them as transfer values ; civil servants had
freedom to move within the Civil Service, because they remained in the same scheme;

teachers had the same facility in their own sphere ; but in general a member of one public

board or service, on transfer to another public board or service, lost a large part of his
past service rights, because he could not stay in the same scheme nor take a transfer

value. The Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1948, enabled various
Ministers to make regulations permitting transfer values, but few regulations had so far

been issued. In his opinion, there should be no deterrent which impeded the movement of
individuals from one public service or board to any other. That interchanges of staff

could be beneficial to all concerned. He saw no reason why a member on moving should

not take a transfer value as certified by the fund's actuary. The technical difficulties to be
overcome were not insurmountable. Transfers were not directly reciprocal. Many

schemes had large deficiencies, or, in the case of the unfunded schemes, no assets, and it

was for consideration how far the management should have to meet deficiency charges
after the employee had left. Should transfer values be calculated on a common rate of