Page 62 - Group Insurance and Retirement Benefit IC 83 E- Book

nationalization of local government funds might then be opposed as vocally as was the

case with industrial assurance.
The appendices to the paper, though very full in the case of Civil Service, local

government and Health Service schemes, were less comprehensive when dealing with the
superannuation schemes of public boards. The consulting practice with which he himself

was connected had recently had close contact with the actuaries of the National Coal
Board, and it might be that a brief examination of some of the problems arising from the

absorption of a large number of small funds into the unified scheme of the National Coal

Board would be of interest. Those funds were not being continued as closed funds, but
members were being granted benefits in the new scheme of equivalent value to those

given up. The National Coal Board had inherited a remarkable collection of pension

funds, and great ingenuity had been exercised by the Board's actuaries in devising
suitable terms for ex-members of those funds.

The member on transferring was granted benefits equivalent to those which he had been
promised according to the rules of his former fund, and no regard was hard to his

prospects of actually receiving those benefits, although many of the schemes had never
seen the light of actuarial investigation and were hopelessly insolvent. In some cases the

pensions were paid only at the discretion of the management, there being no fund in

existence. In those cases, the members could claim what were known as customary rights,
which, if established, could be exchanged for equivalent benefits in the new fund.

Members of the schemes taken over head, however, the right to take what was known as
assimilated benefits, whereby their existing rights to benefit were preserved so far as past

service was concerned, but they must come into the new fund for future service. If they
could, on retiring, prove that they would have been better off in their former schemes,

they could claim the benefits to which they would have been entitled under those

schemes.
Needless to say, the new National Coal Board scheme was far superior to most of the

schemes taken over, and cases where members elected to take assimilated benefit were

likely to be rare. On the other hand, the new scheme applied only to those in the industry
of the rank of deputy and upwards, and he did not know what steps were being taken to

preserve the pension rights of those below that rank.